Disclaimer:
Tyrian, Dorian, Klaus, his father and butler and all other
Eroica-related things are sole property of Yasuko Aoike. What I have
done to them is no fault of hers. The other characters don't exist,
either, and while the town of Eberbach does, I have felt free to
rearrange it and dabble in its history.

Notes: My
thanks go to my beta readers, Theresa, Ruth S., Masae and Lisa, who
encouraged me, helped me with Eroica details, and made this story much
better than it was.

Peripeteia:
sudden change of fortunes; in drama, the climax and turning
point of a tragedy, leading into the catastrophe; also used for other
narrative forms

Peripeteia

The dark silhouette of the Eberbach family seat rose majestically
against the muted fire of sundown reflected on clouds. The castle was
relatively young; the original Eberbach seat, built in the 11th
century, had been razed to the ground in the 16th century when the
infamous Tyrian Persimmon had shouldered his way into the bloodline.
Reportedly, Tyrian's new relations had not been at all sorry to see the
last of him when he'd been simultaneously stabbed and blown up with his
ship before construction of the new castle had even begun.

Since Tyrian had had the bad taste to let his treasure sink together
with what remained of his person and ship, the Eberbachs had fallen
back on tried and true methods, doing their best to extort, rob,
confiscate and otherwise acquire the funds to restore them to their
former influence and glory. This process had taken well over two
centuries; in the end, it had been the courtier and fop Walter von dem
Eberbach, regarded as an unfortunate embarrassment by most of his
contemporary relatives, who'd succeeded both in this and in building a
suitably ostentatious castle. He believed in living in style, and that
he had been forced to wed the daughter of a merchant to achieve his
goal hadn't bothered him; he solved the problem of social embarrassment
by not letting his wife into public at all, and the line had - by such
glorious means - been carried on in fitting pomp.

Before and since, the line had produced many illustrious offshoots that
had been known variously as plunderers and pillagers, ruthless
criminals, brutal tyrants, violently unprincipled hedonists, and even
daring heroes… sometimes as all of these things at once. Today, having
weathered the victories and defeats of several more centuries, the
family was once again expanding - growing, and presumably strengthening.

The youngest offshoot of the main branch of the exceedingly tenacious
line sat in his car in the driveway and stared at the invitingly
illuminated windows of the castle's main wing, built by the unusually
sedate, if hedonistic and unprincipled Walter and financed by
Elisabetha "Lisel" von dem Eberbach's father, successful spice merchant
Jupp Mueller.

This particular Eberbach was not a criminal, but he had lied, betrayed,
stolen and killed and would likely do so again with equal lack of
remorse. He was not unprincipled, but ruthlessness and brutality were
traits he could not in good conscience disown; he kept them
well-shackled and serving his sense of duty and justice, but there were
times when he imagined he felt them straining at the stern bonds his
will imposed on them, recalling the ages past when they had raged
unchecked through blood of his blood, though flowing in other veins.

He'd lost track of how long he'd been sitting there, disconnected
family facts flitting aimlessly through his mind. The sun had dipped
behind the eastern tower some time before. Klaus was fairly certain it
had been dusk when he arrived on the castle grounds.

He had a splitting headache. A triple agent of uncertain provenance
who'd been working for no one but himself at the time had smashed his
head hard against a very solid brick wall a couple of days ago, but
Klaus didn't attempt to make himself believe that this was the reason.

Weddings. Klaus loathed weddings.

A car was coming up the driveway behind him. He'd heard the gate open a
minute ago, but hadn't really paid attention. The realisation that he
was neglecting to pay an appropriate amount of attention to his
surroundings shook him from his unproductive brooding, and he quickly
stubbed out his latest cigarette, got out of the car and was already
striding towards the entrance with his suitcase in hand by the time the
latest arrival pulled up behind him.

Klaus didn't turn around. He didn't care who it was and he didn't want
to acknowledge their presence. If he did, he would have to greet them.

The butler opened the door just as Klaus set foot on the last step up
to the portal, looking as staid and impassive as always. Klaus wondered
how long the old man had been watching him from the pantry window.

"Sir," the butler intoned sombrely. "It is good to have both you and
the Baron here again. Your father will be pleased to see you."

Klaus chose not to respond to the obvious lie. It was better to start
this ordeal out on some kind of good foot.

"Hmm," he said instead in an only vaguely grumpy tone.

A young girl he didn't recognise edged past the butler respectfully and
took the suitcase from Klaus. After a brief tug at his briefcase and a
muted growl on his part, she retreated hastily. Klaus automatically
noted that she was approximately sixteen or seventeen years old, one
point six seven meters in height, a bit on the plump side but not
remarkably so, her hair dyed dark red but mousy brown by nature. Her
eyes were grey and she wore untinted contact lenses. Her nose was small
and extremely tip-tilted and would be very hard to disguise.

The unidentified girl - presumably a schoolgirl hired as temporary help
- quailed beneath the butler's rebuking stare, though she was evidently
still uncertain what her error had been. Apparently she didn't
distinguish between luggage in general and briefcases in particular.

Klaus relented and tossed his briefcase into her arms, causing her to
all but drop the suitcase and squeal a little in surprise. Klaus pushed
past her and the astonished-looking butler, shrugging out of his coat
and handing it to the latter as he passed.

There was nothing in his briefcase except empty paper, several pencils
sharpened to the point where they could be used as offensive weapons,
and a supply of cigarettes. Klaus wasn't about to bring secret
documents into a castle filled with relatives, servants and assorted
other rabble. There would be plenty of other things to worry about.

Such as the person waiting for him inside.

"I see you are still wearing your hair in that slovenly and unaesthetic
manner," Baron Theodor Walter von dem Eberbach said from across the
hall. His voice was quiet, but cut through the distance between the
door and the foot of the stairs effortlessly. It was the same tone he
used with everyone except his closest friends - an unmistakably
commanding tone, precise and cool, resonant with the steely certainty
that he would be obeyed.

Klaus could feel his nostrils flaring and his upper lip beginning to
curl into a snarl. The strength of his instinctive reaction took him by
surprise and he bit the inside of his cheek until he tasted blood,
clamping down on the unreasonable surge of defiant anger. *He has the
right to command you,* he recited to himself. *He is your father and
the head of the house, and you will not defy him. Not more than is
absolutely necessary.*

"That is because I still see no reason to change it," he said once he
had his temper back under control.

The present Baron and head of the Eberbach family slowly walked across
the crest inlaid in the parquet floor, every movement suffused with
dignity and breeding. His hair was completely white, the colour of
frost in the first ray of morning light; as always, he was impeccably
groomed and looked both distinguished and at ease in one of his
tastefully expensive designer tuxedos. Klaus hadn't seen him wearing
anything else in quite a while, and somehow, it had always seemed to be
the most natural attire for his father outside of a uniform.

For a brief, incredulous moment after the Baron stopped in front of
him, Klaus thought his father would hold out a hand or maybe even give
him a clap on the shoulder. To discourage such an action, however
unlikely, Klaus stood up straight and clasped his hands together behind
his back in a stance just short of being at parade-rest.

His father took a long moment to inspect him from head to toe, lips
compressed in vague disapproval. Klaus didn't know what had prompted
the disapproval this time, but he had decided a very long time ago that
he would stop being unsettled by the uncertainty. He supposed that
there had been too many definite reasons that had at some point melded
into a perpetual, if subtle state; inappropriate behaviour, the
occasional less than excellent grade, another boy or his parents
complaining of an attack - an attack that had, in the official version,
inevitably been completely without provocation - a broken window or
even, that one time, a kitten not hidden from discovery quite as well
as Klaus had hoped... Yes, there had been more than enough definite
reasons.

By now, the point at which he'd stopped trying to explain or change his
father's habitual censure lay so far back that he hardly remembered
what cringing beneath the cold stare of Eberbach senior had felt like.
It was not in Klaus' nature to cringe, and he had never done it well.
It had probably been the one redeeming quality his father had found in
him back then.

"Most of the guests arrived yesterday or this morning," his father said
at last. "I have received numerous inquiries as to your whereabouts."

"I am certain everyone understood that international politics seldom
wait for the convenience of family festivities," Klaus replied just as
coolly and evenly.

"Anton is younger than you, you know."

The command tone had now hardened into open rebuke and Klaus stood
ramrod-straight, trying not to lift his chin too high for the stance.
No more defiance than absolutely necessary.

"I am aware of that," he said icily. Perhaps he should have kept
completely silent, but that could have been interpreted as a statement,
as well.

"I have assured the Countess von Thurnis that you will be happy to show
her daughters around Eberbach tomorrow."

Klaus tried not to grimace. He'd intimidated the Thurnis girls out of
what little wits they possessed the first time he'd been thrown
together with them, but they were even more frightened of their mother
and dared not resist her relentless matchmaking attempts. Klaus had
tried to intimidate the mother, but had failed dismally. Equipped with
a bullet-proof designer suit and reduplicated several hundred times,
the woman would have made an unstoppable secret weapon. The Soviets
would have been married off and cowed or fleeing to hide away in
Siberia within a year.

"Yes, sir," Klaus gritted.

"Now for heaven's sake go change into something appropriate. You are
late enough as it is."

Klaus nodded smartly and waited for his father to step aside before
proceeding straight to the stairs, marching up the curving staircase
and down the corridor to his room with the same steady, measured tread
he had always used in these halls. Slower than a run - because running
was not appropriate - and quicker than a regular walk - because
dawdling was not allowed.

He desperately wished for a pressing international crisis to arise and
call him away.

*Courage,* the old, familiar inner voice whispered to him, calling up
walls of ice and iron to hide behind, conjuring forth strength from the
bitter joy of defiance. *When the battle is upon you, fight to the
death and admit no defeat.*

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Weddings! Dorian loved weddings. Everyone got out their very showiest
jewels and didn't worry about the emeralds clashing with the rubies,
because for an occasion like this one, cousin Ethel would be turning up
in her diamond tiara, and they really couldn't let her think she had
somehow managed to put one over on them, now could they?

Such determined cheer and ostentation! Such delightful indulgence in
champagne… And such large and only partially familiar crowds of
relatives close and remote, friends old and new, colleagues,
neighbours, acquaintances, thieves…

Lovely. Perfectly lovely.

Especially when the marriage in question was that of one Anna Juliane
zu Herforthsweiler and one Anton Waldkirch von dem Eberbach, a cousin
to the mouth-wateringly lovely and frustratingly elusive Major of
similar name. *Especially* when the marriage in question was being
celebrated in the family seat of the Eberbachs, which also held "The
Man in Purple", the quite valuable portrait of Tyrian, ancestor of the
Eberbachs, who incidentally happened to bear an astounding likeness to
his choleric but delectable descendant.

And most especially when, in order to be able to entertain such an
impressive number of guests in style, an almost as impressive number of
additional servants had been engaged for the occasion.

Really, when presented with such an opportunity, it would practically
be a crime not to take it up. It had been child's play for Dorian to
secure a temporary job as waiter and general factotum, in spite of the
minor impediment that his command of German was still somewhat less
than complete. What did that matter, however, when he was not only
amazingly handsome but also equipped with a multitude of talents,
something which even the crusty old Eberbach butler - though happily
unaware of be-wigged and disguised Dorian's true identity - had been
able to see at first glance?

Though the butler very likely hadn't counted upon the particularly
honed set of talents which had allowed Dorian to pass through a number
of locked doors on his way to the gallery displaying the pictures of
the Eberbach ancestors…

And there he was. "The Man in Purple", larger than life and almost as
beautiful as the Major in the flesh.

Dorian took a careful look at the grain of the painting to ensure
himself he wasn't about to go to this much trouble for a cheap copy.
No, it was the real thing - apparently the Eberbachs didn't hold with
hanging fakes on the walls while keeping the originals in bank safes,
which was a practice Dorian himself deplored deeply for obvious reasons.

The frame was hooked up to an alarm system which was, in its turn,
connected to the main unit down in the cellar. Dorian had already had a
look at this while he was on an errand to fetch a selection of wines -
the cellars were a labyrinth of narrow corridors, claustrophobic
cubicles and echoing caverns, and no one had been surprised it had
taken him a bit longer than it might have to find his way back with the
Riesling and Burgundy he'd been sent for.

The alarm system wouldn't give him too much trouble, and he'd already
arranged for a catering truck manned with his staff to arrive at an
appropriate time to spirit the successfully filched painting off the
estate. He had several hours left… The perfect opportunity to wander
around Klaus' ancestral home, imagine what it had been like to grow up
here, and maybe catch a glimpse or two of the man himself as he scowled
at the guests and did his best to make certain no one forgot themselves
so far as to actually enjoy the party.

Really, the man was a terrible grouch… If only he hadn't been so
absolutely irresistible at the same time.

Dorian hadn't chosen to fall in love with Major Klaus Heinz von dem
Eberbach of NATO, and if he had had even an idea of the amount of
longing and pain the man would cause him over the years, he might have
chosen to simply concede victory to the other man and run when he'd
first clashed swords with him. On the other hand - to be entirely
truthful, he probably wouldn't have been able to resist taking a closer
look at someone so alluring that somehow, the sheer power of attraction
completely eclipsed every other consideration.

The man was obnoxious, rude, brutal, and in every way impossible. His
subordinates were scared to death of him. He insulted and even
physically assaulted Dorian at every turn, repulsed his advances,
called him names and expressed his contempt and disgust. And Dorian
kept coming back for more.

Why? Well… For one thing, the Major was the embodiment of perfect male
beauty. His every move was at once a joy and torture to watch… such
smooth, muscular grace and unconscious, natural elegance... But that
wasn't all - there was still something more. What was it?

As he made his way back down to the kitchen to fulfil his waiter duties
for another two hours or so, Dorian pondered this question at length.
He'd done so often before, but had never come to an entirely
satisfactory conclusion.

For one thing, he was capable and efficient, but not dry and boring as
such men usually were. Fearless, daring, brave - so focussed, so
intense, so utterly determined… Once you had won someone like the
Major, they would be yours forever, body and soul. It was strange, but
the Major was the first and only man with whom Dorian could imagine
entering a relationship with any level of commitment. There was no
choice in the Major's case - this kind of man knew no compromises.
Besides, Dorian could not imagine ever having enough of him, or even
wanting to stray while he had this man in his bed.

Dorian was not so shallow as to attach undue importance to the merely
sexual aspect of a relationship with his reluctant love, of course. It
went without saying.

With that fact clearly established, Dorian allowed himself to expand on
the topic a bit in the privacy of his own mind. His mouth went dry just
contemplating what someone like the Major would be like in bed. All
that determination and perfectionism, all the explosive energy, the
unswerving focus - all of that turned to the purpose of driving Dorian
insane with desire… He'd be hesitant at first, perhaps even a bit
awkward, embarrassed at his own inexperience, shy… But Dorian would be
only too glad to teach him how to touch and taste and -

"Hey, you, Faulpelz! Where the hell have you been? Here, take that to
the reception in the front parlour, and come straight back here when
those are gone! Don't forget the empty glasses, either."

A gigantic tray of filled champagne flutes was thrust into his arms,
rudely dispersing his fantasy of his beautiful love's steep learning
curve. What did *Faulpelz* mean? His German lessons had managed to
skirt all of the truly useful terms. Most frustrating. On second
thought, maybe it was just as well.

After a moment of panicked balancing and a dirty look at the back of
the Eberbach employee now hurrying off to hassle other hapless waiters,
Dorian sniffed and took himself and the horribly unwieldy and heavy
tray off to the front parlour. Unlike most of the other temporary help,
Dorian had no trouble at all in orienting himself in the castle. He'd
memorised a floor plan of the place beforehand.

No, he said to himself again, he was not shallow enough to desire Klaus
von dem Eberbach merely for his body, as lovely as that was. Even
though it was one of the most desirable bodies he'd ever set eyes on…
He sometimes had trouble preventing himself from simply jumping the man
and dragging his clothes off in order to look at him, touch him, lick
him all over… He'd tried a couple of times, but with complete and
lamentable lack of success so far, especially as regarded the licking
part. The man defended his virtue more priggishly than any girl, and
with far more radical methods. It was awfully frustrating.

It was undeniable that Dorian was badly in lust, but it was more than
that. Sometimes, most often when the Major thought no one was paying
attention, when he wasn't paying attention himself, there was a spark
of something in those usually so steely green eyes that tore at Dorian
and made him hope and long with renewed fervour… Dorian knew how
ridiculous it would seem to most people to think of Klaus, the human
tank, in those terms, but he knew his man. His Major was lonely,
unhappy, helpless and in dire need of love.

Dorian knew that he could soothe his Major's loneliness. He could make
him happy and content - he could supply everything the other man lacked
in his life. All that he wanted in return was to be able to partake of
the man's beauty in every way imaginable, a far more than reasonable
exchange considering that he meant to make quite sure that the Major
would enjoy every second. If only that stubborn SOB would open his
amazingly lovely eyes and really *look* at Dorian and see what he had
to offer!

In the beginning, Dorian had been confident that it would not be long
before the Major gave in to his advances. After all, nobody resisted
Dorian - he'd set his sights on men proclaiming they were straight
before, and he hadn't paid their assertions the slightest mind. They'd
ended up in his bed in short order, and they'd been quite happy to be
there, too.

That had been before he'd truly gotten to know Iron Klaus, who had
shown appalling stalwartness in continuing not to fall into Dorian's
eager arms. He seemed to possess no sex drive of any kind.

The shocking notion made Dorian shudder inwardly. What a terrible
thought. What a horrible waste!

He kept an eye out for his love as he made his way through the large
room, filled with formally and expensively dressed people glittering
with jewels. Several pieces caught his professional interest as he
passed in his task to offer champagne to the wedding guests, but none
was so spectacular that it distracted him from his primary goal. "The
Man in Purple" was too important to risk over that portly dowager's
diamond-and-pearl choker or the bride's rather pretty set of emeralds.

Although… Dorian took a surreptitious closer look at the emerald
earrings and was impressed. Very large and clear stones in an unusually
intensive grass-green colour. Well-cut, too. Maybe some other time.

"Klaus!" the bride said loudly, directly into Dorian's ear. Dorian
almost dropped his tray; he'd only just recovered when the man who had
just entered the room turned, his chin coming up and setting into
granite hardness.

The Major made his way through the milling people, ploughing ahead with
an only passing attempt to pretend to social graces. He was wearing a
tuxedo and looked…

Dear heavens.

The champagne almost slipped from Dorian's grasp again as he turned
away hastily to stare at someone - anyone - else. If he looked at the
Major for just one moment longer, he would be forced to ravish him in
front of everyone, and then the love of his life would no doubt be very
angry with him. Oh *God*. Who'd have thought that it was possible for
the man to turn up the sex appeal to this degree - and without even
undressing?

"Thank you, Klaus. I am sure to be very happy with Anton - he is a
wonderful man. I don't think we would have suited very well, do you?"

What!

"You are too good for me," Klaus said, spoiling the amazingly gallant
phrase by the flat tone in which he delivered it. "Anton is a lucky
man. I wish you well."

Goodness. He was really making a major effort here, wasn't he?

"That is a lovely dress. You look very pretty."

Dorian hardly knew what to think. He recollected himself far enough to
lift his tray a bit higher, offering it to several guests, and gathered
up a number of empty glasses before shooting a glance at Anna out of
the corners of his eyes. She was smiling and didn't look particularly
stunned at the Major's unprecedented effort at polite gallantries.

"Excuse me."

Ah.

Dorian couldn't suppress a smirk at the hardly noticeable shadow of a
taken-aback look that appeared in Anna's face briefly before it was
smoothed over with the easy practice of the well-brought up. His love
had turned on his heel and was stalking away without a second glance.
The Major had only been trying to pack all of the necessary small talk
into as little time as possible.

"Oh, rrrrr," a low female voice commented behind him.

"Yes, I agree," Anna responded in a normal speaking tone. "But that
fact won't do anyone any good, I'm afraid. I should have been quicker
to introduce you - still, you should steer clear, anyway. You'll only
catch frostbite."

The completely irrational impulse to throttle the bitch who dared to
lust after *his* Major caught Dorian by surprise and he hurried to
distance himself from the newly married woman and her friend. That he
found himself slowly, but surely drifting in the direction the Major
had taken was pure coincidence. Truly.

His tray was almost entirely filled with empty glasses by the time he
finally caught up with his chain-smoking love where he had been
cornered by an elderly man with a shock of grey hair and a monotonous
laugh that reminded Dorian strangely of camels, even though he was
certain he had never heard a camel make any sound even remotely similar.

Without looking in his direction, the Major reached out and snagged one
of the remaining full glasses, draining it in one gulp and exchanging
it for a fresh one immediately. Dorian hovered a little - just in case
another new glass would be required. And because from where he stood,
he could see the soft fuzz at the back of his love's neck where he'd
swept back his long hair a moment ago.

He fled then, before he could succumb to the all but overwhelming need
to bite Major Klaus von dem Eberbach in the side of the neck and bury
his nose in the enchanting fuzz.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Mercifully, the soup, salad and dessert options were arranged along the
side of the dining hall on long buffets, but that still left the main
courses and, of course, the drinks to be attended to - and refilling
the buffet. And clearing away the used dishes and glasses, and bringing
fresh ones…

By the time the last members of the wedding party had eaten their fill,
the ones that had finished first had begun to drift back for one more
little bowl of the soup, one more slice of this cake or that pie, or
maybe just a spoon full of that chocolate mousse - waiter! Are you
telling me there are no cocktail tomatoes left? And where is the wine I
ordered ten minutes ago!

If the thieving line should ever become unfeasible for one reason or
another, one profession that Dorian would not be tempted to adopt was
that of waiter.

When the rushing back and forth had finally abated to the point where
he would not immediately be missed, Dorian sneaked off to the gallery
to take another long and covetous look at the painting that would soon
be hanging in his bedchamber back in London. He was still undecided
whether it would look better above the open fireplace or between the
windows on the east wall, and he surely deserved a little indulgence
after the ordeal he'd just gone through.

Dorian almost wished he'd lived when Tyrian had, despite the deplorable
state of plumbing and the lack of other essential comforts. There were
so many legends about the man - he'd been a rogue, a tyrant - wild,
vindictive, power- and pleasure-seeking, impulse-driven, charismatic
and completely without scruples or limits. Utterly fascinating. Not a
pleasant character to know, perhaps, but irresistible when regarded
from the safety of later centuries. And really, Dorian couldn't help
but think he'd have gotten along famously with the man.

*Stupid,* he chided himself laughingly. *Always playing with fire,
never learning from getting burned.* And Tyrian would surely have
burned him, as he'd burned everyone who'd come too close or even just
drawn his attention in his time… But Dorian had never been able to
resist that kind of ruthless, reckless, devil-may-care gleam in
someone's eyes - provided, of course, that they were set in an
attractive face. And the painter had captured that look perfectly, the
look Dorian had also seen on the face of -

Oh, blast it.

He'd been too absorbed in his thoughts to take a careful look at the
room he was entering before slipping inside. Basic caution, a voice
inside his head mocked - a voice bearing an irritating similarity to
that of the Major when he was being his most coldly disdainful.

For a long, frozen moment, Dorian thought he'd blown his cover. Then,
the sharp suspicion in Klaus' expression faded, leaving him looking
almost indifferent, and his head and shoulders disappeared back behind
the column from which they'd so suddenly sprung forth. A small cloud of
cigarette smoke emerged in his stead, marking his presence.

This was not a fitting moment to stare covetously at "The Man in
Purple". Neither was this a fitting moment to stare covetously at the
man in purple's descendant. Still… what painting was he looking at? If
it was a particularly valuable work - or even if it was just a
particular favourite of the Major's - then Dorian might as well pack
that one up, as well, while he was at it.

Hmm… a fairly recent work, if Dorian was any judge - which, of course,
he was. A woman in a scarlet riding outfit with silver trimming, a
small pillbox hat with a perky scarlet feather attached perching on an
artistically coiled crown of mahogany braids. The horse occupying most
of the background to the right was a gigantic, coal-black brute with
wild eyes and blood-red nostrils. To the left, a stretch of countryside
could be seen, complete with castle Eberbach in the distance.

The quality of the painting itself was average to moderately good. The
woman was lovely in an austere kind of way, but wore a strange and
somewhat unpleasant expression that seemed to be composed in equal
parts of boredom, hauteur, frustration and sadness. Unless the painter
had been worse than Dorian thought, the woman must have been rather
difficult.

Dorian risked a peek at the Major and was relieved to find that the man
wasn't looking at him. He had resumed his strangely disinterested
gazing at the painting and leaned back against the pillar he'd been
lurking behind, legs crossed at the ankles and looking as indolent as
he ever did with his cigarette held loosely in one hand.

"Who is the lady?" he asked in his most careful German, more because he
was truly curious than because he thought he'd actually get an answer.

"Your mother?" It slipped out before he could stop himself and he
winced a little, certain that now the expected fiery rebuke would come.

"Yes," Dorian's one true love said calmly, not looking at him. "My
mother."

They stared at the painting together for a while. The only thing Dorian
knew about the Major's mother was that she had died when Klaus had been
very young. Seeing this picture, though, he couldn't imagine that she
had been an easy woman to live with. None of the Eberbachs seemed to be
simple and uncomplicated. None of them seemed to know how to enjoy
themselves, either.

Well, some of them would just have to learn.

Dorian tried to find some resemblance to her son in Claudia Henriette's
features, but found none. Not entirely surprising, really, since he was
such a ringer for his ancestor in the paternal line.

"So," the Major said after an indefinite amount of time had passed in
silence. "Are you after the family silver or do you have a more
ambitious target?"

"What!" Dorian burst out in heated indignation. "I came up here because
a lady asked me to see if you were feeling ill and you accuse me of
being a thief! All I'm trying to do is my job!"

The Major straightened away from the pillar at last, turning to glare
at Dorian in pale imitation of his usual glower. "Oh? What did this
lady look like?"

Dorian described the bride's friend, but that did not seem to ease the
suspicion in his love's emerald eyes. Evidently he was not being
believed, in spite of his skill at fabricating from whole cloth.

Still, there was also that almost worrying passivity that amounted
almost to lack of interest. Under normal circumstances, Dorian would
already have found himself tossed into a dark cellar somewhere with
only a couple of king-sized bruises to keep him company.

"Come with me," the Major said at last, stubbing out his cigarette in
an ashtray perching on the window sill next to him before brushing past
Dorian to head for the door. Apparently, there was no doubt in his mind
that his order would be obeyed. For some reason, Dorian had been
classed so firmly in the "bothersome but harmless petty criminal"
department that he didn't even hesitate to turn his back on him.

Tuxedos were all well and good, and it was beyond doubt that Klaus
attired in one was the stuff of wet dreams and would haunt Dorian's
nights for countless months to come, but the things did have one very
important drawback - they concealed a very appealing part of male
anatomy that Dorian knew for a fact was well worth looking at in the
case of this particular specimen.

They reached the door and Dorian looked up from his regretful partial
inspection of his Major's legs and well-covered buttocks to meet cold,
narrowed eyes that were suddenly staring at him with an
all-too-familiar expression of appalled disbelief.

The Major drew in a deep breath and expelled it again slowly, creating
a vaguely threatening sound halfway between a hiss and a huff, but he
said nothing. He made Dorian go first when they went down the stairs,
though.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When they reached the bottom of the servants' stairwell, Klaus was
still debating the question of whether to simply kick the foiled thief
out with a warning not to show his face around here in the future or
whether to go to the hassle of calling the police. With a small shove
at the shoulder of the felon, he directed him to the right, towards the
kitchen.

He really should call the police, he told himself. There was every
possibility that the man had already squirreled some things away -
jewellery he'd stolen off the guests or assorted knickknacks he'd found
lying around… who knew. Searching him would do no good. He would have
stashed them somewhere on the premises, somewhere he or an accomplice
would be able to retrieve them later.

Damn irritating thieves - always popping up to make an already bad
situation worse, always complicating everything, always staring at him
as though he were on the menu and they were starving…

Why did this always happen to him? What the hell was it about him that
attracted this kind of twisted desire from men like -

Wait a minute.

This thief had crept into the gallery where, among many other valuable
pictures, that useless and bothersome "The Man in Purple" hung. He had
asked prying personal questions and had tried to brazen it out when
confronted with his larcenous intentions. He had been unabashedly
staring at Klaus' ass.

The face seemed broader, the features heavier, but that could be
padding and skillful makeup. The short dark hair was obviously a very
superior wig. The dark eyes must be tinted by contact lenses while the
skin had been darkened several shades by make-up, or perhaps through
careful tanning. The figure was correct - tall, slim, lithe and
moderately muscular. He hadn't even attempted to pad his waist. Vanity,
Klaus supposed. And the accent, although it might conceivably have
passed as an Italian one, really sounded more like an English one
attempting to pass as an Italian one…

"Eroica," Klaus said flatly. In front of him, the step of the Earl in
disguise faltered briefly before he half turned, raising his false dark
eyebrows in feigned innocence.

"What did you say?"

"I said Eroica, you bloody nuisance," Klaus snarled in English. A
strange feeling unfurled in his chest and he realised that he was
actually glad at this chance of clean anger. "What the hell are you
doing here?"

"I wanted to see you," the infamous thief tried hopefully, a
flirtatious smile appearing as if conjured forth.

"Riight. And you wanted to see some of my movable possessions, too, you
damned -"

And then he lost his train of thought in mid-rant, just as he was
gearing up to come out with some truly virulent insults that would wipe
that artificial simper right off the thieving, conniving little
pervert's face. Every one of the already assembling curses fell right
out of his head, blanked out by the icy wash of shock that slammed into
him at the sight of the man walking out of the library across the hall.

Lord Gloria was saying something, but Klaus shoved him aside roughly
and set out across the hall, the expanse of polished wood suddenly
blurring and looming strangely. There was a rushing in his ears that
almost obscured his voice when he spoke again, making his own words
sound impossibly distant and unfamiliar.

"You. Get out."

He'd become an old man since Klaus had seen him last. He was sturdier,
though nowhere near fat, and his posture had lost part of the athletic
vigour he'd always been so proud of. The lines in his face had been
there before, but had buried far more deeply into his skin; the
hairline had retreated. Klaus, who hadn't seen him for over ten years,
found himself stupidly surprised at the fact he'd been touched and
changed by something as banal as time.

He was smaller than Klaus, and somehow, this was by far the most
surprising thing about the encounter.

"Get the hell out of this house. Get the hell off this property. Don't
*ever* come back."

His godfather looked dismayed and held out a conciliatory hand. Klaus
knocked it aside and realised that he was shaking with rage, or shock,
or something else.

"Klaus, please. I came because I had hoped that now that we were both
rational adults, we could finally bury this ridiculous ill feeling you
have been nursing -"

"*GET OUT!*" He was shouting. Hadn't he been determined not to shout?

Robert Tobias retreated a quick, nervous step and turned hastily,
addressing Klaus' father, who now stepped out of the room behind him, a
thunderous expression drawing his brows together. "I told you he
wouldn't want to listen to reason, Theo. He hasn't changed at all."

"Klaus!"

He saw his own hand shoot out and connect with the older man's jaw. He
even felt the impact. It did not feel as though cause or effect were
directly connected to him, though.

That bastard Tobias fell back hard against the wall, stumbled and
almost sagged to the floor. Klaus' father hurried to catch him and pull
him to his feet, his face a mask of shock and rage. "Klaus. You will
*immediately* apologise and -"

"I will do *no such thing.*"

And then he was stalking across the hall and both that bastard and his
father were retreating before him, and he was still shaking and shocked
and too numb to truly be aware of what the hell he was doing. He didn't
care, he didn't give a damn what his father was trying to say or why
his face was flushing that dangerous shade of blood-red, he didn't
care. All he cared about was getting that bastard out of here, out of
his sight, out of his life.

The door was open. Had he opened it or had it been the butler? It
didn't matter and he didn't waste time thinking about it. Tobias was
stumbling down the stairs, falling to his knees at the bottom. Where
was his father? But that didn't matter either, because now Tobias was
hurrying across the drive, limping a little as though he'd twisted his
ankle. Klaus hoped he had, Klaus hoped he'd broken it, broken his jaw
too, should have done that so long ago, should have killed the bastard
- killed him. For some reason he hadn't been able to do it, even though
he'd wanted to, wanted it with a deep and terrible yearning that had
never truly died, that still burned in him even now.

Tobias was shouting something, but Klaus couldn't hear. The man had
stopped moving. He was backed up against a car and not moving and Klaus
wondered why he lived still when all those years ago, Klaus had wanted
to kill him. Why hadn't he? Why didn't he?

And that was the moment that Klaus realised, with an exhilarating sense
of sudden, dizzying freedom, that there was still time. He hadn't been
able to do it then, but things had changed and there was still time. He
could do it now.

"Keys! I don't have the keys! I don't have my keys -"

*I can kill you. I hate you, and I can kill you because there is
nothing, nothing, absolutely *nothing* to hold me back.*

He never felt the sting of the dart in his back, and even the
blood-edged darkness reaching up to swallow him seemed strangely
expected, fusing without a break into the churning rage and hate and
the triumph of his own power and unconditional will to end this
particular life.

"If I ever see you again, I will kill you."

And he knew he'd spoken the words out loud before the blackness dragged
him down. He could tell by the expression in the bastard's eye. He was
telling the truth, and Tobias knew it.

As surely as if he had locked his hands around the man's head and
broken his neck, as surely as if he had choked out his life with his
breath or put a bullet between his eyes or driven his nasal bone into
his brain - Klaus had won.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Oh dear. This was not going at all according to plan. He should have
been out of the castle hours ago, proud possessor of "The Man in
Purple", poor substitute for the living, breathing version perhaps, but
nevertheless a possession Dorian had quite looked forward to. By this
time, he should have been out of the country, heading for home… leaving
his Major, though not for too long.

Instead, the catering van bearing his people had come and gone, leaving
Dorian still at the castle with both the picture and the Major. He'd
refused to listen to anything his men had said to him on the subject of
his decision to stay. He'd claimed he was only waiting for a better
opportunity to snatch the picture, but he didn't think Bonham had
believed him.

The truth was that he couldn't leave the Major now, not even having
witnessed that appalling outburst. The Major needed him. Dorian had
known this for some time, and this occurrence might conceivably be
turned into an opportunity to make that stubborn German realise it, as
well.

Dorian had never seen anyone go berserk before, and he'd found that it
was not at all a pleasant sight - not even in the wonderful Major,
whose outbursts of temper Dorian quite often enjoyed. His acquaintance
with the love of his life had taught Dorian appreciation of the brand
of aesthetic appeal held by the sheen of bright steel… The same appeal
held by the exhilarating mixture of danger, streamlined violence and
sheer physical beauty of the Major's blazing anger. He was at his most
superbly, ravishingly beddable when he was in a towering rage, and
usually Dorian never wanted to rip the man's clothes off more than when
he was shouting at the top of his voice.

So far, of course, Dorian had not actually revealed this to his
excitable love. He rather thought it would be wise to postpone that
revelation until he'd actually bedded the man several times and
mellowed him just a tad. Not too much. He didn't want him to change -
much. Just enough to get him to stop fighting Dorian - to get him into
Dorian's bed. No more.

This new and immoderate brand of rage the Major had flown into at the
sight of his father's friend had not been aesthetic or attractive at
all. Dorian had thought he'd seen the Major lose his temper before, but
quite evidently, he'd been wrong. The Major had been about to kill that
man with his bare hands. No one had come right out and said it, but
only the timely intervention of the elder Eberbach and the rifle his
gamekeeper used to sedate wildlife for veterinary treatment had saved
Mr. Tobias's life.

There would be hell to pay once the Major woke up. The elder Eberbach
seemed more than ready to commit murder himself, even if it did leave
him without an heir. Saying that Dorian's one true love had disrupted
the nuptial celebrations was like saying that a hand-grenade lobbed
into a hotel lobby had gotten the receptionist's attention.

It was fortunate that Dorian was here to take care of Klaus. He'd
quickly turned himself into a Venetian student of medicine about to
graduate and jobbing as a waiter to freshen up his finances before
embarking upon the last leg of his European tour. Everyone had been
thankful to get the Major off their hands at least for an hour or two.
They'd all gathered around the deathly pale and gasping Tobias and been
perfectly happy to leave the Major to Dorian once he'd been carried up
to his room and dropped on the bed.

If Dorian hadn't been so insistent, Eberbach senior would probably have
left his son to sleep it off right there in the driveway.

No one seemed quite certain when the anaesthetic would wear off; the
only certainty on the matter had been provided by the gamekeeper, who,
when rung from his sleep at Dorian's insistence, had divulged the
information that on a healthy young stag of average weight, one dart
would guarantee around a half hour of sleep.

The Major had been out like a light for almost three hours. Dorian was
beginning to worry. If he didn't show signs of beginning to wake up
soon, Dorian would insist that a real doctor be called in to take some
blood tests, or whatever it was doctors did under these circumstances.
The poor Major couldn't be over six times lighter than an average stag,
could he? He *had* turned out to be pretty heavy, after all…

Dorian had finally had the opportunity to undress his insensate love,
and he hadn't even been in the proper mood to take full advantage. He'd
pulled off his shoes, bow-tie and jacket and of course loosened his
shirt - he could hardly not do so in his role as nurse - but he'd been
too worried to enjoy it properly. It was not at all like his fantasy of
getting the man drunk and undressing him… This was simply too serious.
And of course the Major could wake up at any moment, and depending on
what exactly Dorian was doing at that moment, might go straight into
another one *those*rages.

All the same, Dorian hadn't been able to stop himself from stroking the
smooth chest revealed beneath the unbuttoned shirt. In truth, he hadn't
tried very hard. He had to calm himself down somehow, after all. And he
couldn't help being interested in the fact that Klaus truly did have
the most lovely legs - swimmer's legs, matching his slim hips and broad
shoulders. No one could blame Dorian for running a more or less casual
hand over his true love's legs. The Major was still wearing his tuxedo
pants, after all. And it seemed as though he were wearing very thick
flannel underwear besides. About six layers, by the feel of it. It was
most frustrating.

"This would be more fun if you were awake and co-operating," Dorian
sighed, combing a slow hand through his love's sleek dark hair. It was
softer than he'd thought it would be - as fine as silk, naturally
glossy. Just as beautiful as the rest of him.

Why did he have to have such a violent streak? It was quite daunting,
really… The thought of someday provoking the Major once too often and
making him fly into such a maniacal, mindlessly murderous frenzy…

Dorian shuddered and clenched his hand in his love's long hair. Damn
the man. Couldn't he at least have the decency to be ugly?

"What did that geezer do to make you so angry?" he wondered, his roving
hand gliding down to the exposed collarbone, stroking lightly. Not that
it was all that difficult to make the Major throw a tantrum, but this
had been something considerably beyond anything in the annals of
written history.

He checked his berserker's heartbeat, which seemed strong and regular
as far as he could tell. No chest hair, as he'd found… Perfectly formed
pectorals though, muscular but not too bulky. Washboard stomach, too,
just as he'd known... and oh, he felt so good, solid and warm and real
beneath Dorian's touch, at last, after so long…

*I refuse to molest a sedated man,* Dorian told himself. He'd been
trying to convince himself of this for the last three hours, and his
power of self-persuasion was waning fast. *I will not sink to molesting
a sedated man. No, not even if he won't notice. I'll be ethical and
heroically refuse… For the most part… Damn…*

There was nothing in the room to distract himself with - he'd hardly
ever been in even a hotel room with so little personal character. There
was not a single picture on the wall, and the only furnishings were the
bed, a closet, an empty desk and a chair, all seemingly chosen for
their utilitarian and impersonally boring qualities. If it hadn't been
for the interesting medieval-style window nooks, complete with built-in
benches, it would have been quite the most horrible room Dorian had
ever voluntarily spent time in. It ranked only slightly ahead of that
unmentionable bed-and-breakfast near Dover where he'd once been forced
to lie low for three days. Ever since those torture-filled days, Dorian
had had a pathological dislike of pink-and-orange flowered wallpaper in
combination with green upholstery.

The Major made a strange sound in his sleep - at least Dorian hoped it
was in his sleep - and the thief hastily removed his hand from his one
true love's belt buckle. Talk about bad timing! Was he going to wake up
just when Dorian had finally defeated his conscience?

"Major?"

The regular breathing of the unconscious man hitched and became ragged;
the still body lost its relaxed sprawl as consciousness returned,
somehow exchanging loose-limbed relaxation for tension even before
co-ordinated movement became possible again.

Dorian suppressed a sigh. His poor love… Look at that, even asleep he
was all uptight and on edge. No wonder he went crazy from time to time.
They would have to find some more pleasant outlet for all of that
accumulated tension…

"Klaus," he whispered next to the Major's ear, his breath stirring the
silky short hairs at the hairline. "Wake up, darling."

Awareness hit the Major's body with the impact of a bullet. Every
muscle tensed at the same time, still tension turning into barely
restrained violence screaming to be unleashed. Klaus twisted out from
beneath Dorian's hands and was suddenly crouching on the other side of
the bed.

Wild and dazed green eyes met Dorian's and with considerable disbelief,
Dorian read an emotion there that he had never thought he would ever
see in the Major. Panic.

It took almost the space of two breaths for recognition to rise in his
love's eyes. The panic seeped out of his expression to be replaced by
the more familiar piercing alertness, but he did not straighten from
his defensive crouch.

"Dorian."

Dorian's breath caught. The Major had never called him by his first
name before - he'd called him Eroica or Lord Gloria, but never Dorian.
He didn't seem aware of what he'd said, and Dorian didn't want to react
too overtly in case he'd say it again.

"Yes," he whispered.

"Is he still here?"

"I don't know," Dorian whispered, pausing to clear his throat and speak
on in a more normal voice. "I think he wanted to leave, but he was -
very shaken. Your father sat him down to get some brandy into him and
calm him down."

The Major's mouth thinned into a harsh line, nostrils flaring. After a
moment, he straightened and stood next to the bed in indecision,
looking towards the door. The look in his narrowed eyes was nowhere
near the wildness of several hours before, but even so Dorian found
this level of hate disturbing.

"He had better not be there when I go downstairs," the Major said
quietly. Dorian didn't think he was talking to him.

"Is he a spy?" Dorian ventured, putting forward the only theory he had
been able to come up with.

Klaus laughed harshly. "Not to my knowledge. Not that I'd put anything
past him." As an afterthought, he added, "Like some other people I
could mention." He wasn't even looking at Dorian when he said it,
though, and his voice was completely empty of the customary anger and
disgust.

"Then what did he do?"

Completely ignoring the question, the Major stretched and winced,
putting a hand to his back where the dart had gone in to feel the small
spot of dried blood. "Don't tell me. My father shot me with the
gamekeeper's rifle."

Dorian nodded slowly. He wondered whether this had happened before, but
wasn't really sure he wanted to know the answer. Earlier, he'd wondered
whether Eberbach senior would have shot his son with a regular rifle if
he hadn't had this one at hand, and he'd decided that he wanted that
answer even less.

"How long was I out?"

"Just about three hours."

The Major nodded and looked back towards the door. After a long moment,
he turned away and walked to the window instead, leaning heavily on the
sill with both hands. The elaborate formal gardens behind the castle
had been illuminated with artfully placed torches, and Klaus looked out
at the nocturnal landscape in silence, unmoving.

No one had ever accused Dorian of being overly patient. Curiosity, now…
That he had in spades.

"What happens now?"

The answer was a long time coming. Dorian had already given up on
receiving an answer when his love turned a little and leaned the side
of his head against the windowpane. He probably had a headache. "I
don't know," he said. "Why are you still here? Go away. I don't need
the hassle of locking up a thief, as well."

"I'll have you know that I am a law-abiding student of medicine from
Venice."

The Major snorted half-heartedly. "Medicine?"

"And it was a good thing that I was here and could be put in charge of
you until you woke up again."

Klaus whipped around, catching Dorian entirely by surprise with the
sudden violence of the motion. A touch of the wild panic was back in
his eyes and Dorian could only stare in astonishment. It faded away
almost immediately, but it had been there; Dorian had seen it, an
entirely new expression that he had now seen twice in quick succession
without being able to explain it in either case.

The two stared at each other for a while.

"Tell me something," the Major requested brusquely. "I want you to take
time and think the question over seriously, and I want a truthful
answer for once. Do you think that would be possible?"

Dorian blinked. "I - of course, Major, for you, anything."

The expected disgusted snort lacked spirit. "Just tell me why. What is
it that you think you see in me that makes you act like this? What the
hell have I ever done to encourage you or give you reason to believe I
- what is it! Tell me what the hell it is!"

"I just love you, Major. There doesn't always have to be a reason that
can be expressed in simple concepts and mere words. One day you'll
realise -"

"What the hell kind of answer is that? Of course there is a reason! I
asked you to think it over, you idiot, so think it over, damn you! I
want a real answer!"

Stunned at the sudden vehemence, Dorian retreated half a step. "I -
well, the obvious answer is that you're very beautiful, Major."

He calmed down at once, apparently acknowledging this as an acceptable
response. His eyes narrowed and Dorian could almost see the wheels
whirring away in his head. "So how do I become less *beautiful* to men
like you? Cut off the hair? Grow a beard? Wear thick-lensed glasses and
speak in dialect? *What?*"

There was something in the disgust in his Major's voice that made
Dorian very uneasy. He spat out *beautiful* as though the word tasted
bad in his mouth.

"I don't think it's possible for you to stop being beautiful," Dorian
said simply. "It's not a bad thing. You should be -"

"Oh yes - I should be so thankful to be molested by perverts! What
great good fortune to be born with a face that attracts warped
degenerates like - you. I think I'll get an operation and be rid of
this problem once and for all."

Dorian didn't know what to say to that, so he remained silent. His love
was clearly agitated and paced back and forth through the room,
stopping at last directly in front of Dorian, so close that he imagined
he could smell him… feel the heat of his anger and frustration coming
off him, the ineffable quality of Klaus that made him so mysteriously
irresistible.

Amazing. Even frustration was sexy on the man.

"Do you never stop to think at all? This is so futile! You waste a
ridiculous amount of energy and effort on an endeavour that is doomed
to failure. *Why?* I don't understand you! Even assuming that you'd
chosen someone - like you - someone who might eventually give in, it
wouldn't be worth all of the trouble. Why are you behaving like an
idiot? Why the hell don't you think it through and accept the
undeniable facts of the -"

"Don't be silly. Having you in my bed will be well worth all of the
trouble," Dorian said, not thinking at all. An instant later, he almost
bit his tongue as he snapped his mouth shut too quickly, wishing he
could bite the words back before they reached the Major's ear.

Dorian never could seem to remember that it was not a good idea to be
too direct around his irascible love - talking of his love for the
other man was bad, but talking of lust inevitably led to a major
blow-up. Klaus was so volatile and, as Dorian had discovered early on
in his campaign to win him, such a terrible prude.

Klaus was looking at him, eyes cold, but seeming almost distracted,
lips compressed into a harsh line that completely obscured the
sensually swung line of his mouth. Dorian couldn't quite decide whether
his darling seemed more likely to hit him first and start shouting
later or the other way around.

But, now that he thought about it, it was taking him unusually long to
start with whatever it was he was going to do first…

Someone else might not have considered this an opening, but Dorian had
been chasing his Major for years, subsisting on barely existing,
perhaps mostly imagined hints of encouragement and a hope of success
that was essentially based on pure self-confidence. Seen in this light,
the uncharacteristic lack of violent denial was almost an encouragement.

Dorian launched himself at the Major without further contemplation,
wrapping both arms around his neck and plastering himself to his front.
Klaus started back violently, but only succeeded in hitting the side of
the bed with the backs of his knees, neatly felling himself and ending
up pinned to his bed by Dorian's body.

The Major's mouth was open, sucking in air in preparation for a
deafening bellow. Dorian clung tighter and covered the other man's
mouth with his own, not wasting any time. He knew he wouldn't have
long, and he had to make the most of every instant.

Klaus' lips were soft and warm beneath Dorian's; delving as deeply into
his love's mouth as he could, Dorian was almost dizzy with the joy of
this unprecedented, stolen intimacy. The Major tasted very faintly of
cigarettes, but mostly of himself, and unlike what Dorian would have
expected if he'd stopped to think, he didn't bite. He didn't bite even
when Dorian risked a split-second separation of their mouths only to
dive back in at a better angle, stroking and teasing with every
particle of his considerable skill. Klaus didn't respond, either, but
that didn't perturb Dorian in the slightest. One day he would - one day
soon, very soon now…

"I love you," he whispered fervently when he drew back at last,
nuzzling his face into his true love's neck and the silky hair spread
out beside it on the pillow like a raven's wing. "You're so wonderful."

The body beneath him shuddered and tensed, every muscle going
rock-hard. Dorian could feel the chest expand against his, hands coming
up in a bruising grip at his shoulders. His time was short. Klaus was
trying to shift, evidently attempting to brace himself against the
mattress and throw Dorian off, but he moved awkwardly, almost
hesitantly… completely without his usual prowling, predatory grace.

The way he moved was one of the first things Dorian had noticed about
him, even before he'd realised how magnificent a creature the man was
as a whole. He could be terribly stiff, prudish and uptight, but he
moved as though he had no bones at all. He flowed. He *stalked*. Like a
panther, green-eyed and sleek - lovely, lethal, all controlled grace
and contained violence… the beauty of razor-sharp fangs and honed steel.

Dorian didn't know quite when he'd become erect, but now he was
achingly hard and throbbing and couldn't think past the raging desire
for the incredible creature beneath him. His Major was shifting
position and Dorian took advantage of the slightly opened thighs,
wriggling forcefully and wedging himself between his love's legs.

The skin beneath his lips and teeth smelled and tasted of Klaus. Dorian
bit down hard, grinding his erection against the other man's groin. If
he hadn't been completely beyond rational thought, he would very
probably have chosen to proceed somewhat less aggressively, but how
could he hold back now that he finally tasted and touched and felt his
love like this, now that his love's body was spread below him like a
feast, very tense and again very still and not resisting, not fighting
Dorian's touch…

Hands were still locked on his shoulders with painful force, but they
didn't push him away. It was left to Dorian himself to pull back in
order to tear at the Major's dress shirt frantically, ripping the front
open all the way to the waistband of the pants.

Klaus made a small sound, a strange sound - not anger, not desire, not
quite distress. Entirely captivating.

"It's all right love, it's all right, I'll show you - oh God, just let
me show you -"

He'd closed his eyes and turned his face sideways into the pillow. His
jaw was now clenched tightly shut, the perfectly sculpted mouth set
into a thin line. He looked almost as though he were in pain.

It would have been a lie to say Dorian understood what was happening
here, but he could not possibly have cared less. He understood enough -
he saw that his elusive Major was at last within his grasp, and that
was the only thing that mattered. Somehow, he had finally found the
right moment, the right method, the right everything.

*Oh yes, yes, don't let him change his mind now, let this last just ten
more minutes, half an hour, a lifetime…*

The cotton undershirt was warm with his Major's body heat and suffused
with the subtle scent of his skin. Dorian licked and bit at the fabric
covering one nipple while his hands tugged the shirt out of the pants
and dove beneath, pushing it upwards. So warm, so solid, silken skin
over sculpted muscle. Intoxicating. Irresistible.

And then the belt-buckle finally succumbed to his shaking, but deft
fingers, and his hand slid beneath another layer of cotton into greater
warmth, finding surprisingly soft curls and an only very slightly
filled penis.

"Love you," he whispered again, unable and unwilling to hold back the
words when the emotion was surging so wildly within him, tangled up
with awe at the man's perfection and the fire-bright and still-rising
rage of lust.

He curled his fingers gently around the Major and assayed an
experimental caress. Klaus' body was so tense that Dorian fleetingly
worried he'd develop a muscle cramp, but his cock was responding to
Dorian's skilled caresses, slowly perhaps, but undeniably. Some part of
Dorian wished he could undress his love fully and do this properly -
slowly and exhaustively explore every delectable inch of Klaus' body -
but that would have to wait because he wasn't about to let go now, not
on any account, not for the entire contents of the Louvre.

The Major gasped in a desperate lungful of breath and let out a very
quiet sound halfway between a growl and a sob.

Oh this was all so sudden and strange and it did not really feel like
the surrender he'd envisioned, but Dorian wasn't about to waste
precious time on thinking. Stubborn prudish pig-headed Klaus, making
everything that should have been simple and natural so terribly
difficult, always trying to turn everything into a joyless chore… But
he'd teach him to let go and simply enjoy eventually, it would just
take a little time. This was still Iron Klaus after all, he was still
resisting his own sexuality and human needs but Dorian would teach him
that there was more to life than cold duty and hard, joyless discipline…

*I have wanted you, wanted this, ever since I first looked at you
properly, my love -* and he would have said it aloud but he couldn't
speak with his lips and tongue caressing what was now a sizeable
erection. He'd done this so often, but it had never been quite like
this, it had never been as though the pleasure of the man beneath him
was all one with his own pleasure, just as though there were no
difference between the two at all.

Klaus made no sound at all as he came, and of everything that had
happened, this surprised Dorian the least. There would be a time when
he would scream Dorian's name, Dorian promised himself, even though he
couldn't really imagine it. Still, he didn't doubt that he'd get him
there eventually. Didn't he always get what he wanted?

He smiled and gently bit the inside of his lover's thigh before looking
up again.

"You are so incredibly beautiful." Dorian's voice was dark and rough
with lust and a muscle in the Major's jaw jumped visibly at the sound.
He did not move as Dorian licked and nipped and bit his way up the
lovely body, up to the collarbone and neck and ear.

Orgasm had relaxed Klaus fractionally, but the sound of Dorian's zipper
made him tense right up again.

"Please," Dorian whispered into his love's ear. "Touch me."

The response was a long time in coming and he reflected fleetingly that
he should probably have left this demand for some other time. It was a
moot point, though - rational considerations had played no part in any
of his actions since the moment his body had hit the bed on top of
Klaus.

The case could also have been made that the moment in question lay much
farther back, at some point during the second time he'd seen the man,
the first time he'd felt the stunning allure of his particular, unique
brand of loveliness, all those bleak, yearning months and years ago…

"Of course you can." Dorian was glad this would be the last time he'd
have to seduce a nervous and uptight virgin to his bed. All he wanted
was to pounce on the Major, who was more than any man could be expected
to resist - priggish and incongruously dissipated all at once with the
rucked-up undershirt tucked just above his nipples and the tuxedo pants
and no-nonsense white boxers tangled about his thighs…

It took a long moment, but at last Klaus took a deep breath, finally
unclenched his hands from Dorian's shoulders, and managed to square his
own shoulders in sombre determination even though he was lying down in
the tattered remains of formal wardrobe. His head turned smartly to the
front and his eyes snapped open, focusing on Dorian, bright
silver-green and unreadable as ever.

Aristocratic nostrils flared. "Very well." He sounded like someone
about to jump out of the trenches for a desperate dash to reach enemy
territory without being gunned down.

He kept his eyes open now, fixed on Dorian's face with peculiar and
unswerving concentration. Dorian moved back a little, straddling his
love's waist and bending down to brush a light kiss onto the set mouth.
The hand at the back of his head caught him by surprise and he almost
lost his balance as Klaus pulled him in for a deeper kiss, his mouth
opening to welcome Dorian's in active co-operation this time. He kissed
somewhat hesitantly - still not certain that he really wanted to be
doing this.

Neither the hesitation nor the determined, almost cool competence of
the kiss bothered Dorian. It was more initiative than he'd expected
after Klaus' earlier imitation of a stone, and more than enough to make
him gasp and tremble in sheer animal lust. Klaus had been able to burn
him with a derisive glance; *this*… this was almost pain.

The Major didn't attempt to undress Dorian further. He slid one hand
around his side to his still-clad buttocks, where it rested lightly.
The other one started at his face, touching his cheek shyly, brushing
over his lips and tugging off the wig to comb through Dorian's hair
when it tumbled free, tugging at the long curls.

Dorian leaned into the caress mindlessly, trying not to forget to
breathe. The unexpected gentleness was turning him on terribly and he
would probably explode the moment Klaus touched him.

Klaus stroked down the side of his neck and Dorian heard himself making
the most extraordinary moaning and gasping sounds. The touch firmed
over his shirt-clad chest and did not hesitate at all when it slid onto
bare skin again, closing around Dorian's erection lightly, but firmly.
Dorian whimpered and bucked as fingertips pressed just beneath the
head, cried out softly at the first strong stroke, and came with a
strangled moan before Klaus could ever establish any kind of rhythm.

"Klaus," he whispered, crawling up the still body to snuggle against
his chest. "Hmm… You most certainly can. That was wonderful. *You* are
wonderful."

The Major closed his eyes again and swallowed, his deep breaths coming
in calculated evenness. Almost immediately, he extricated himself from
Dorian's clinging embrace and rolled to his feet smoothly, pulling up
his trousers and straightening up the rest of his attire as well as he
could. He didn't look at Dorian.

"This did not happen."

"Whatever you say, darling," Dorian purred. The stab of disappointed
anger that flashed through him at his love's coldness was a bigger
surprise than the coldness itself - he automatically fell back on one
of his more overt 'screaming queen' voices and felt a certain amount of
satisfaction at Klaus' instant and predictable reaction. "You know, I
happen to have stumbled across a rather charming little gourmet
restaurant not very far from here - Zur Alten Muehle, I believe. Let's
have dinner tomorrow and see what else won't happen."

"GET OUT!"

It was a good imitation of his Major's usual rage, but not good enough
to fool Dorian, who considered himself the greatest living expert on
his love's tempestuous outbreaks of temper. There was something lacking
in the tone - the volume was there, but the emotion was wrong somehow,
and Klaus still wasn't looking at him. Dorian couldn't understand it,
but he was beginning to grow slightly uneasy.

"Major, is anything wrong?" When you got right down to it, none of this
made any sense… Not even his almost detached behaviour when he'd caught
Dorian in the gallery had been characteristic, and it had gone farther
and farther off track with his unprovoked attack on the old man in the
hall, his strange passive willingness to be seduced, then even his
active participation - and now this lacklustre temper…

Klaus whirled and glared at Dorian, tangled black hair falling into his
eyes. "IS ANYTHING WRONG??? Now what could possibly be WRONG? You're
here and he's here and my father is going to kill me and I've just let
you - I - and - even though I've finally won, even though he KNOWS I
have, it means NOTHING! And you haven't even told me *why*, you blasted
queer! There are plenty of men around who are more *beautiful* than me
and I know damned well that that isn't the real problem!"

Dorian had a hard time concentrating on the words. He'd always thought
that Klaus in one of his rages was the hottest thing since flame
throwers, but *now*, with the taste of him still in his mouth, the feel
of his skin still tingling on his fingers… God, *now*…

Perhaps the reason for Dorian's preoccupation showed in his face;
whatever the reason, something twisted in his Major's expression and he
went into full melt down. As always, he was sexy as hell with his green
eyes blazing like that… Still, maybe it would be not entirely unwise
for Dorian to remove himself from his one true love's immediate
proximity until the man had calmed down a bit.

Accordingly, he jumped up and sprinted for the door, successfully
eluding Klaus' grip with a quick twist and slamming the door behind
himself. He paused to zip up and then darted around the nearest bend in
the grey stone hall, pressing back into a window nook in case the Major
decided to brave the corridors in his dishevelled condition.

He did not, although a series of crashes announced that he was not yet
entirely back in control over himself. Someone pounded down the
corridor and stopped in front of his door. There was a noticeable pause
before the unidentified someone knocked, somewhat timidly.

Even muffled by ancient stone and thick wood, his love's bellow was
quite impressive. The answer of the timid knocker was not audible from
where Dorian hid, but even the slightly damped response of the Major
was still clear.

Really, Dorian reflected smugly, his command of the German language had
benefited greatly from his love for the Major - he did want to know
what his darling was saying when he was screaming at him, after all. So
far, his understanding of curses and insults had been exercised most
frequently, but he made a mental note to brush up on endearments and
love-talk. Couldn't be all that long anymore now, he reasoned.

"Incompetent idiot! Half an hour I said!" Mumbling from the shy one.
"Blast it!! Are you deaf? I said half an hour, so tell him half an
hour, you spineless excuse for a man!" More mumbling, desperation clear
in the tone. "Oh bloody damned well! Tell him to come up then.
Miserable coward!"

Oh, now Dorian couldn't possibly miss this… The Major was going to have
an interview with his father, who was probably the genetic source of
that fierce temper and who would want to cast light on his son's
peculiar outburst as much as Dorian did.

The muffled footsteps of the timid servant retreated and Dorian peeked
around the corner to make certain the coast was clear before creeping
back to his love's door. Low growling could be heard in the room
beyond; then, an inner door slammed.

Dorian cracked open the door, assured himself Klaus was really in the
bathroom, and slipped inside. After brief deliberation, he opted for
the clichéd, but nevertheless best place of concealment under the
circumstances - behind one of the very thick, dark red velvet curtains.
If he pulled it up in front of the window nook just a bit, he'd even
have a comfortable place to sit. Thank God for medieval window seats.

His love emerged from the bathroom wrapped head to toe in a bathrobe,
of course. Dorian suppressed a disappointed sigh as Klaus lit up a
cigarette, straightened up the bed with two efficient tugs and threw a
day cover over it, pausing and bending to look underneath after a
slight hesitation.

Dorian had briefly considered that hiding space and was beginning to
feel smug for his foresight in choosing a better one when his love
turned to face the window. Damn! Why hadn't Dorian thought of this? Of
course he'd want to air the room to make sure no tell-tale scent of sex
remained.

The door slammed open with enough force to rebound from the wall
shuddering and the elder Eberbach stormed in. Dorian retreated behind
the curtain as far as he could. Two of them in a small contained space…
they were lucky if this didn't result in the destruction of the castle.

"Explain yourself." Very cold, but with the threat of explosion lurking
just beneath the surface.

"I can't, sir."

Dorian winced. Oh, Major, not wise, not wise at all.

"You have no explanation or you will not give it?"

"I cannot give it."

"You have disrupted the festivities - cast a shadow over the marriage
of your cousin - attacked, injured and nearly frightened to death my
oldest friend and your own godfather - and you actually have the nerve
to STAND HERE AND TELL ME YOU WON'T CONDESCEND SO FAR AS TO GIVE ME
EVEN THE WEAKEST EXCUSE FOR YOUR INEXCUSABLE CONDUCT!"

There was no reaction at all and Dorian, who'd shrunk as far back
against the cool stone as he could, risked tugging the fabric shielding
him from sight back slightly to catch a glimpse of what was happening.
The Major had sunk to sit on the edge of the bed, face closed, staring
up at his father with no expression whatsoever on his face.

The elder Eberbach shuddered and stepped back, turning to pace back and
forth several times in exactly the same way his son did when he was
trying very hard not to hit someone. Klaus used the interval to inhale
the rest of his cigarette and half of a new one.

"Robert has always been a good friend to you, and he still is even now,
despite your unspeakable actions - he has not even attempted to put
blame on you, although he has no more of a clue where this ridiculous
grudge you have been holding for well-nigh fifteen years now originated
than I do. He told me that he was certain you thought you had good
reason. I can only say that this is a testament to his great
high-mindedness and inexplicable good will to you as the son of a good
friend!"

"I am sorry, sir, but I cannot discuss it with you," Klaus said in a
low, almost dead voice that Dorian didn't like at all. "However, my -
grudge - is not ridiculous. It is well-founded, and although I am aware
it may be difficult for you to believe this when I cannot elaborate
further, I am asking you to accept that I do have good reasons for my
actions. Sir, I regret putting you into such a position and apologise
for the disruption of the wedding celebration, but I am forced to ask
you to trust -"

"After the way you have behaved today? How can I ever trust you to
behave like a reasonable adult again after this! You were about to kill
my oldest friend, you refuse even to tell me why, not that any
explanation would be able to excuse such criminal conduct, and then you
ask me to trust you? You have certainly never lacked for bloody nerve!
I should have known to expect something like this after the way you
used to be as a boy - it's incomprehensible to me that I should have
such a son! All your life you have been -"

Klaus flung himself off the bed and stood nose to nose with his
red-faced father. "I *can't* tell you! I would if I could, but - sir,
just trust me for once - please!"

The last word sounded painful, as though it had not only been torn from
him, but had injured him on the way. Dorian felt a sharp burn of
resentment towards the older Eberbach. Couldn't he see what it had cost
his son to bend this far? For Klaus, this kind of behaviour amounted to
abject grovelling. What the hell did the old bastard expect, anyway -
didn't he know his son at all?

"Klaus. I am ordering you as your father and the head of the house.
Clear this up."

What dirty tactics! Dorian noticed that in his indignation at this
underhanded blackmailing strategy, he had clutched the heavy curtain so
tightly that he was about to bring it down. Hastily, he forced himself
to let go.

The pause was long and painful, but Dorian had no doubt of who the
victor of this bout would be. The elder Eberbach had played an
unbeatable trump card - grab Klaus by his sense of honour and duty and
you had him right where it hurt.

"I can't," the Major whispered at last. Dorian realised that he had
never before heard him sound defeated.

For a terrible moment of stunned shock, Dorian thought the incredulous
gasp had come from him; only when Eberbach senior added an inarticulate
sputtering did he realise who the true originator of the sound had been.

It seemed that this particular underhanded tactic had never before been
known to fail and now, Eberbach senior had no powder left to shoot with.

The silence that followed was now no longer painful, but terrible; the
air was charged with tension and anger and Dorian imagined he could
feel the building storm crackle in the room like electricity building
up for lightning. He wouldn't have been surprised to see his hair stand
on end from the charge.

The door slammed and heavy steps stomped off down the corridor. Inside
the room, the silence was complete.

Dorian held his breath for as long as he could for fear the sound of
his lungs working would give him away. When he could no longer manage,
he was certain the sound that was so loud in his ears would have Klaus
tearing aside the concealing curtain and beating him to kingdom come.

Nothing. The silence remained unbroken. There was not even the flick of
a lighter or the deep inhalation of someone taking a drag at a
cigarette.

Now he was beginning to worry, strange and improbable scenarios
flickering through his mind. What if Eberbach senior had had a knife
with him - what if Klaus was at this very moment bleeding out his life
not three meters away from Dorian? Of course it was ridiculous, the old
man wouldn't do that and no one died this silently, not even his stoic
Klaus, at least Dorian was *sure* that there would have to be some kind
of rasping or gasping or -

"Great high-mindedness!" Dorian was so relieved at this sign of life
from his Major that the terrible bitterness in the low growl didn't
register until the second fragment of conversation was replayed.
"Inexplicable good will!"

In any good movie, this would have been the moment that Klaus,
believing himself alone, would have relieved his heavy heart of the
mystery weighing on him by entrusting it to the walls of his childhood
domicile, thereby unintentionally filling in the good friend who
watched and listened in hiding, concerned for the handsome hero and
eager to earn his undying gratitude by taking care of whatever the
problem was.

Unfortunately, Klaus did not have the part of the handsome hero down
very well. After another endless moment of utter motionlessness, the
bed creaked and the robe rustled as he stood up. The Major himself made
no sound, but the closet creaked as well, and there was more rustling
as clothes were selected and pulled out. Dorian tried to resist for
only a second or two before risking discovery once again by twisting a
fold of fabric and peeking out.

Klaus, still swathed in over-sized bathrobe and carrying an armful of
formal tuxedo and starched white shirt, disappeared in the bathroom and
closed the door. Amazing. The man went to the bathroom to change even
in his own room.

Dorian waited around until his love emerged just to be certain he
wouldn't be missing out on anything if he left early. Yes, indeed...
The Major was buttoned up to the chin and only stopped to put on his
shoes and light another of his ever-present cigarettes before following
his father.

Well, he'd gotten the man into bed. It was only a matter of time before
he managed to do it again at more leisure, enabling him to look his
fill. And touch his fill, of course. Not to mention lick, bite, taste
and smell and any other conceivable method of experiencing Klaus…

Thoughtfully, Dorian sat on his love's bed. After a moment, he pulled
back the day cover and tugged the pillow into his lap, burying his face
in it and breathing in his Major's subtle, unique scent.

Now. How could he find out just what the hell had happened here this
evening?

What facts did he have to go on? Well, start with the obvious - there
was bad blood between the Major and this Tobias, bad blood of a
magnitude that had sent the Major into a rage the likes of which Dorian
had never seen before, and he had seen quite a number of volcanic
outbursts. But this - this had been new and frightening, just like the
glimpses of a panic alien to the man Dorian knew and loved.

And he'd been behaving strangely in other ways, as well. He'd even
started talking about why Dorian was attracted to him when he never
talked about such things - he'd come right out and asked what he could
do to become unattractive to Dorian and men like Dorian, demanded to
know what it would take to rid himself of "the problem". What a
typically contrary and skewed attitude to take on the matter of his own
beauty that was. Anyone else would have been glad, but no, not Klaus.
Nothing was ever that simple with Klaus. *What great good fortune to be
born with a face that attracts warped degenerates like - you.*

At the time, Dorian hadn't paid attention to the way his love had
spoken that sentence, but in retrospect it hit him that Klaus probably
hadn't been thinking of Dorian at all when he'd started that sentence…
He'd substituted the reference just in time.

Bloody hell! Who had been chasing his Major when Dorian's back was
turned? And how could he have missed this?

Dorian punched the pillow in his lap in frustration and jumped up to
pace around the bleak and depressing room his love called home. How
dare some brazen stranger hit on his Klaus - was it that ridiculous
English agent? Was it that simpering little transvestite in Klaus' own
office? Or was it someone else entirely, someone he'd just met - But
no, Dorian was certain he'd have heard of that. He had his sources,
after all, sources who knew how much it would interest him to hear of
someone else daring to cast a covetous eye at his Major. It must have
been before Dorian had found Klaus and staked his as of yet not quite
confirmed claim to the man. Some years back, some brassy lecher must
have -

And just like that, it all clicked into place.

There was bad blood between the Major and this Tobias *because of
something that had happened many years back*, when Klaus had still been
a child - something that both Tobias and the Major refused to elaborate
on. Something that the Major would not, *could* not talk about even
now, not even when his father invoked his overdeveloped sense of duty
and family loyalty.

Something that had evoked a frightening, berserk rage in Klaus.

Oh no. Oh no, *no* -

This entire strange and frightening episode suddenly made a terrible
kind of sense. So many other things did, as well - the Major's
violently negative reaction to Dorian's advances, his dogged refusal to
accept that there was anything but twisted perversion in Dorian's
affection, even his lack of interest in sex in general… His
ridiculously exaggerated prudishness… And of course his reaction to the
sight of an old friend of his father's, whom he'd almost killed with
his bare hands in front of his father, Dorian, everyone…

Who had brought stark panic into Iron Klaus' eyes. Who had had to do
nothing but open a door and step into his fierce, fearless Major's line
of sight in order to do so.

"Oh *no*, oh my God no," Dorian whispered, appalled. He didn't want to
believe this - it seemed hardly possible that such an appalling thing
could happen to Klaus, not to *Klaus* - he would have killed the man
first, torn him limb from limb and spat on the corpse… But then he
hadn't always been a six-foot two fully trained NATO agent, had he, and
he *had* tried to kill the bastard, a little late, but the attempt had
unmistakably been in complete earnest…

*Oh God, my love… What has that bastard done to you?*

And what had *Dorian* done?

But it wasn't the same, Dorian loved him, Dorian would never hurt him
or - or force him to do something he didn't want to do...

Dorian realised with a surge of nausea that he couldn't really be sure
that that wasn't exactly what he'd done. He'd jumped on Klaus, pushed
him down, kissed him and groped him and almost forced a reaction - and
how could he be sure that the reaction he'd gotten at last was due to
an attraction on Klaus' part that he just didn't want to admit? That
was what he'd thought at the time, what he'd wanted to think, but… How
could he be sure it wasn't something else entirely, that Klaus hadn't
been lying so tense and still because he'd been reliving memories of
something so terrible that he couldn't even move to escape from
Dorian's touch, that his physical reaction hadn't been mere reflex
forced from his body against his will, that he hadn't just been
suffering through a replay of something he'd thought he'd put behind
him forever long ago…

But it *couldn't* be the same! Dorian loved him. Dorian loved him! He
hadn't wanted to hurt him -

The desperate thought seemed even weaker now than it had a moment
before, the hope drowning in despair. Because really, how likely was it
that Tobias had deliberately set out to hurt his best friend's son, his
own godson - wasn't it far more probable that he'd thought he felt some
- some kind of - affection -

*I came because I had hoped that now that we were both rational adults,
we could finally bury this ridiculous ill feeling you have been
nursing.* Ridiculous ill feeling. Great high-mindedness.

Dorian made a dash for the bathroom and barely made it to the toilet in
time. He hadn't eaten much today, but even after he'd regurgitated
every scrap of food he'd ingested in what seemed like the last two
weeks, his stomach refused to settle down and he retched miserably,
bringing up nothing but a thin dribble of bile that burned his throat
and made his eyes tear.

It was also possible that he was crying. At this point he couldn't
distinguish between the nausea and the horror anymore.

Was there really a difference between Dorian and Tobias? How could
Dorian have failed to notice something so fundamental - how could he
have forced his attentions on his love so vehemently and been so
oblivious to Klaus that he had never realised - had never even
considered the possibility -

Nothing had truly changed, but now Dorian suddenly saw how far from his
grasp everything he had hoped for, everything he had thought would soon
be his, truly was. He'd been making a bloody fool of himself - he'd
been expecting the Major to fall into his arms and bed at any moment,
never realising how far from success he had truly been in his hopeless
campaign.

Not even in those occasional and brief moments of self-pity when he'd
despaired of ever carrying his point with his stubborn love had Dorian
considered giving up before. But now… How could he not? Knowing what he
knew now, how could he force his love on Klaus any longer, knowing what
it must mean to his one true love to be pursued like this - knowing
that he was causing pain and torment where he wanted only to heal, to
soothe and comfort and love…

But he knew he would be fooling himself with a decision to stay away
from the Major. Klaus might never let Dorian close, but somehow or
other his image had insinuated itself so deep into Dorian's previously
all but impervious heart that he could not let go of the last sliver of
hope without losing himself.

And somehow, this was almost the most terrible part of this evening's
revelations. For the first time in his life, Dorian was literally
sickened by his own egotism. It didn't help that he suspected even his
self-disgust was nothing more than a method to ease his conscience.

It was too late. He couldn't let go now. Not even to prevent more pain
to his beloved could he stay away. Not even when he'd already raped the
only man he had ever loved could he stop yearning after his body.

There was nothing left in his stomach, not even bile. It didn't seem to
make a difference. He threw up anyway.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Oh my! Look, the Neckar. And that would be the old town centre over
there, I dare say. You can see quite a bit from up here, can't you,
girls?"

Klaus suppressed a growl. The girls timidly agreed with their mother's
inane statement, one even going so far as to smile at Klaus hesitantly.

The Countess of Thurnis, Hedwiga, youngest daughter of the Duke of
Bavaria, leaned out of the narrow window of the Powder Tower's belfry
for a moment longer, her boyishly short hair fluttering in the breeze.
Her three daughters stood together at another window on the far side of
the small space, only one of them seeming interested in the view of the
town of Eberbach and the adjacent river valley spread out below. One of
the others was shivering a little from cold because she had foolishly
failed to consider the weather when choosing her designer costume for
the outing.

Klaus considered the possibility that she had gone without a warmer
coat on purpose in order to oblige him to lend her his own - which he
would only do if she came right out and asked for it herself, which he
knew perfectly well was out of the question. He then wondered whether
his job was making him paranoid or whether he'd always been this way.

"Isn't that Heinrich's car there? He had one of those older Rolls
Royces last I saw him. I thought he was in Austria at some ridiculous
cabinet meeting or other and couldn't come. Really, you'd think he'd
have taken a clue from what happened to his unfortunate great-uncle
when he tried to get back into politics. The men in that line have
never had a sense of timing, and anyway I have always held that -
goodness. Who's that? *That's* not one of Heinrich's lot. I'm quite
certain."

Klaus looked down on the old market square and a miniature figure
wrapped in a royal blue cloak and had no doubt at all of the figure's
identity. Even if the wide brim of the extravagant hat completely
obscured the wearer's face and hair from this point of vantage, there
was something about the movements, the way he shook out his cape and
settled the hat at the correct angle before turning to walk into the
lobby of the "Hotel Karpfen", the most expensive hotel in town.

"That," he said, his mood for once taking a radical swing to the better
at the man's appearance as he saw the gleam in the Countess's eye, "Is
Dorian, the Earl of Red Gloria."

"Really!" She whirled away from the banister at once, posture
straightening and face settling into determination. Her girls
straightened beneath the scrutiny of their mother, who was looking at
them like a general mustering the troops. " Maria, girl, your hair.
Straighten that jacket, Hannah. Don't hunch your shoulders. Didn't you
have anything more fitting to wear? Konstanze, you're growing prettier
every time I look, and of course your English is excellent…"

Klaus smiled maliciously and stepped aside to let the attack formation
sweep through the narrow door leading to the winding staircase, intent
on settling on the hapless Eroica and incidentally leaving Klaus behind
in perfect peace and quiet.

That was the plan, at least.

The Countess stopped and snagged Klaus' sleeve. He tried to jerk the
fabric from her grasp, glaring at the woman indignantly, but she was
unimpressed and held on firmly. "You must introduce us, Klaus. How well
do you know the Earl?"

The Major turned up the intensity of his glare until it had reached the
dimensions of a full glower. This expression had made trained KGB
agents drop their guns in sheer fright and made even his superiors take
cover, but Hedwiga, with countless generations of high-handed and often
fatally self-confident nobility in her blood to back her up, was
completely unfazed.

"Quite well enough," he snapped finally.

"Then perhaps you know whether the rumours I have occasionally heard
concerning his - ah - life-style are founded in truth?"

This was the outside of enough. Klaus tore his sleeve free with a
violent jerk and snarled "I do not concern myself with rumours." This
was completely untrue, of course - rumours were an excellent source of
information in any field - but he really did not feel inclined to
discuss the Earl's sexuality right now. Or ever.

The Countess was watching him in mild surprise, her eyebrows climbing
into her hairline. "How unwise of you, Klaus. But it doesn't really
matter, I suppose. Everyone must marry for one reason or another, after
all."

"Eventually," he snapped, with a tone of voice that he hoped made it
very clear that as far as he was concerned, eventually was a very long
way off.

She lowered her elevated eyebrows and smiled enigmatically. "Shall we
go?"

And so they went.

Klaus tried not to think. He'd been not-thinking ever since last night.
As long as he didn't think, everything would flow smoothly and normally
onwards. As long as he didn't acknowledge anything unusual - anything
he didn't want to acknowledge - it could not make a difference to him.
Nothing would truly change if he did not allow it to change him.

A pile of suitcases, hatboxes and assorted other items of luggage was
already piled in front of Eroica's car when Klaus and the Thurnis women
emerged from the tower's entrance. Hotel employees were bustling back
and forth to carry the load inside while Bonham continued to produce
new items of the Earl's travelling wardrobe out of the limitless trunk
of the Rolls Royce.

Klaus marched by without acknowledging Bonham, but noted the small
start the older man gave when he caught sight of him. It made him feel
a little better to know that there were still *some* people around who
were properly intimidated by him.

The Earl of Red Gloria was draped artistically over the front desk, all
sunlight-blond curls and midnight-blue satin, one hand negligently
splayed on the counter, the other one stemmed into his waist, gathering
back the folds of the voluminous cloak and holding the hat. He was
wearing a billowy white blouse, black trousers and thigh-high black
boots beneath the wrap; the only thing missing was a sword. From the
ridiculous clothing to the elaborate, calculated pose, everything about
the man was too much - too extravagant, too obviously calculated to
draw attention, too exuberant, too loud… too everything.

Taking a deep breath, Klaus steeled himself. "Lord Gloria," he barked.
"May I present to you Hedwiga, the Countess von Thurnis, and her
daughters Maria, Konstanze and Johanna von Thurnis. Hedwiga, girls,
this is Dorian Earl of Red Gloria. Have a nice day."

The man coming in with a new set of Eroica's luggage hastily jumped
aside for him, but Hedwiga was too fast for the Major. She snatched his
arm and dragged him right back to the front desk, where Eroica was now
staring at the gaggle of Thurnis girls with huge, startled blue eyes.

"Now, Klaus, don't rush off, it's not polite, and we haven't seen the
Nepomuk Church or the Medieval baths yet. We're going to invite the
Earl to join us, aren't we? Lord Gloria, do come along. Dear Klaus is
showing Eberbach to us, we just saw lots of medieval fortifications and
ammunition towers and such and there's still a whole day ahead of us!
And we can all go up to the castle afterwards and -"

"No! I happen to know Lord Gloria is a very busy man," Klaus ground out
hastily before that infernal woman could come out with her latest
horrendous scheme. "We cannot impose upon him. I know he'll gladly drop
everything for the sake of not offending anyone, and really, I
absolutely insist that he not go out of his way."

"Klaus, don't be so stuffy. Let's just let the Earl speak for himself,
shall we? I know Lord Gloria would love to see -"

"I AM NOT STUFFY!" Klaus roared. This was simply too much! Did he
really have to stand here and let himself be insulted by the unbearable
dragon just because she was related to him around three dozen corners?

For a long moment, the lobby fell utterly silent. Even Eroica flinched
slightly, but Hedwiga only tutted and waved an amused hand at her new
hope for one of her daughter's matrimonial prospects. "Don't mind
Klaus, Lord Gloria. He's all roar and no bite. Let's all go over to
that charming little café we passed earlier to take tea."

The Major gave up. Sometimes the best way to handle an appalling
situation was to go with the flow - at this point, further attempt to
better it would only muddy the waters further and most likely lead to
even worse results.

Damn - he was out of cigarettes. He barked a command at the woman
behind the front desk, who happened to be unfortunate enough to catch
his eye when he looked around searchingly. She'd been watching the
entire proceedings with an increasingly wide-eyed and rabbit-like
expression, and now she jumped to get him a new packet of cigarettes
with gratifying promptness.

Sweeping a dark glower across the entire lobby just in case anyone felt
like giving him any more nonsense to deal with, Klaus met Eroica's gaze
for the first time. The man looked doubtful, almost unhappy, really,
and Klaus' mood lifted slightly. At least he wasn't the only one forced
to endure the curse of the matchmaking witch. And if the damned
nuisance thought that he was safe just because he was queer, he was in
for a nasty awakening.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"What brings you to Eberbach, Lord Gloria?"

The question caught Klaus' wandering attention and he listened with
half an ear as Eroica spun out an improbable yarn of an auction in
Heidelberg, friends in Neckarsteinach and an interposed tour of the
countryside.

The dragon had taken care of the seating arrangements in a manner most
agreeable to Klaus; he was sitting in between two of the marriageable
daughters while Eroica was wedged in between Konstanze the
English-speaking and Hedwiga the Horrible herself. The two girls next
to Klaus had fallen silent after only the most desultory attempts at
striking up a conversation with him, and their mother was too busy
grilling the English Earl to bother him, which also meant that the
English Earl was too busy countering her conversational sallies to
bother Klaus.

The Major had simply leaned back, sipped his coffee, and allowed his
thoughts to drift. He'd also been smoking almost constantly, silently
daring anyone in the café to protest. No one had felt up to the
challenge so far. Too bad. Klaus could have done with blowing off a
little steam.

It was time to think. Not thinking was all well and good while it
carried you through a difficult situation without making you falter the
way thinking would have. Sooner or later, though, there came the point
when a switch in strategy was called for. Not thinking was no solution
in the long run - it was a danger in itself, and it was cowardly.
Whatever else he might be, Klaus had never been a coward.

Very well, then.

The first step in any investigation was to gather the available facts.
The facts of the case were clear enough for the most part - Eroica had
been pursuing him for years, and yesterday, Klaus had allowed himself
to be caught.

It was the question of motivation that was giving Klaus trouble. Of
course Eroica had never made a secret of either the circumstance that
he was a perverted queer or that he wanted to get the Major into bed,
but those factors were only the surface facts of the matter and the
more important reasons behind them were as completely in the dark as
ever. What was it that drove Dorian to desire the Major, of all people?
Was it the challenge, perhaps? What *could* it be?

And as for Klaus' own motives… There were too many possibilities, and
none of them seemed satisfactory.

He caught himself shying away from the subject and frowned darkly at
his own cowardice. It was fruitless to deny something that had
inarguably taken place. The proper procedure was to analyse it, find
out why it had happened, and employ the results of the analysis to
determine an optimal plan of action.

Facts, he reminded himself. Work with what you know. The fact was that
he had voluntarily had sex with another man - with Eroica. He could
easily have fended off the thief's advances, but he had chosen not to
do so. Instead, he had allowed another man to have complete access to
his body and bring him to climax. And more than that, he had returned
the favour when Eroica had asked him to.

He had threatened to kill Tobias on sight, and then he had turned
around and let Dorian give him a blow job. It made no sense.

But of course that wasn't true, and he didn't let himself get away with
the weak and foolish attempt at evasion. It made sense, all right.
Everything made sense. One only had to discover the controlling and
unifying facts behind the apparently random events that made it to the
light of the public.

He took another drag on his cigarette, leaned back more comfortably in
his chair and regarded Eroica, ruthlessly dragging up and sorting out
his own feelings. The thief was frivolous, flighty, exasperating and
irritating, and almost always acutely embarrassing to be seen with. The
man made no secret of his predilection towards larceny and sexual
perversion, and the only principles he followed were his own giddy
whims and fancies. The pursuit of personal pleasure ruled his
existence. An existence more futile and pointless could hardly be
imagined.

Still, no matter how often Klaus had declared that he hated Eroica,
this was not true. The thief frequently annoyed him to the point of
physical violence, but he couldn't hate someone so essentially
harmless. He was a major nuisance, he was a thief, and he was a
pervert, but in the end he was no more than an overgrown and
irresponsible child.

The man had no sense of proportion, no feeling for the relative
importance of things, no larger point of view beyond his own wishes and
desires. He was infantile and irresponsible, yes, but there was not the
slightest spark of malice in him - he was, in his own strange,
debauched way, an innocent, pure of heart and as naïve as a new-born.
And the Earl's boundless enthusiasm, irrepressible cheer and intense
joie de vivre were almost endearing at times - Eroica was playing at
life like the child that, in a way, he was. He played dress-up, he
chased after every shining bauble that caught his fancy, he always
wanted to have his own way, and he always seemed to expect life to
follow some dramatic, elaborately romantic script that he had written
for it in his own mind.

He exasperated the Major, but at the same time, he… drew him. Now,
looking at Dorian's perfect profile, the carefully groomed tumble of
golden curls, and the ridiculous pirate outfit, what Klaus felt was
almost like… affection.

Right on cue, Dorian turned his head and looked at Klaus, smiling
slightly at something the Countess was saying. Deep down in Klaus'
being, buried so deep down he would have missed it if he hadn't been
searching for it, something never before acknowledged stirred at the
look in Eroica's deep blue eyes.

Shaken, the Major looked away, and by the time he had collected himself
to return the thief's scrutiny, a renewed scowl directed at his own
weakness gracing his features, Dorian was not looking in his direction
anymore.

It didn't matter. Klaus had found the facts he had set out to find.
What had happened yesterday had not been a fluke - an aberration caused
by the stresses of the day and the after-effects of extreme anger and a
heavy narcotic. He was attracted to Eroica. There was no way around it.

Well, hell. There was no use denying it - he *would* face facts. He was
not weak and cowardly enough to deny a proven fact merely because he
did not want it to be true. Major Klaus von dem Eberbach was attracted
to another man - had, in fact, had sex with him. This obviously meant
that he was queer.

Or did it? Perhaps he was only experiencing a temporary upsurge of the
bi-sexual tendencies dormant in everyone. Of course, that line had
sounded like a load of crap when he'd heard one of the NATO
psychologists spout off some drivel of the kind, but then - hell, what
did Klaus know about it?

Damn. It looked like he was going to have to find out one way or the
other, whether he wanted to or not. Not even his own urges seemed
interested in what he wanted anymore. Instincts... What anachronistic
nonsense. As if he didn't have enough to deal with already.

No use moaning about it. The question was now what he was going to do
about this appalling situation.

Once he'd found the right angle of approach for the problem, it really
wasn't all that alien. Just another problem to be solved, another
ominous mystery to be cleared up, it's destructive potential safely
dissipated.

First things first… Most of all, more facts had to be gathered.

So far, Dorian had seemed unusually subdued, which Klaus had chalked up
to the Countess' account. The Major was immensely relieved that the
flamboyant Earl wasn't trying to flaunt the true extent of his
relationship with Klaus in front of the Thurnis family, which was far
more discretion than could have been expected from the nuisance - Klaus
would have denied everything heatedly, of course, and there was no
doubt in his mind that he would have been believed, but it would have
been utterly mortifying all the same.

But whatever his reasons, Eroica was as well-behaved as Klaus had ever
seen him, conversing with the Countess and even her dumb daughters with
more patience than Klaus had ever been able to conjure forth for this
kind of empty social prattle. He had looked at Klaus, yes, but even the
Major couldn't blow up at looks alone, particularly since they'd been
almost discreet by the thief's standards. He hadn't made any outright
propositions or even flirtatious remarks, and for Eroica, that was the
epitome of discretion.

Good. The unusual reticence made it easier for Klaus to carry out his
own newly forged plans. He hoped Dorian would continue to hold back his
over-abundant exuberance a bit. Klaus thought he would find all of that
enthusiasm a bit daunting when it came down to the crunch. Not that he
was afraid, of course. Merely - somewhat apprehensive.

"Dinner at eight, the restaurant you mentioned," he said casually as
the Thurnis daughters collected their handbags, jackets and assorted
other paraphernalia in preparation to leaving the café at long last.

"Pardon me… Major?"

Klaus glared at Dorian. The man looked almost shocked. Now what? Had he
suddenly become shy after a lifetime of brazenness, or was this merely
another of his aggravating poses? "Are you deaf or just stupid? I said
eight, tonight. Understood?"

Evidently so. The thief agreed very quickly after being asked the
second time, although he still looked a bit dazed.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As its name implied, the restaurant "Zur Alten Muehle" had once been a
mill. The brook that had been used to power the grinding stones had
long since been diverted or dried up - Klaus rather thought he should
have remembered which, but was too distracted to attempt to retrieve
the memory of what he had once learned of local history. The wheel had
been preserved, though, and the building itself had been first a shed,
then a private house, and had now been converted into a small,
exclusive gourmet restaurant.

Klaus parked some streets away from the old mill and walked the rest of
the way on foot. Force of habit - he knew that his car was far less
likely to be recognised than he himself was. It didn't make a
difference. He was having dinner with a foreign Earl who was passing
through, a man whom he had run into several times before in Bonn.
Nothing could have been more innocuous. Except, perhaps, inviting said
foreign Earl up to the formal dinner now taking place in Schloss
Eberbach.

Eroica would be very surprised to learn that he was of a retiring bent
and very shy of joining large gatherings when he didn't know anyone
there.

"Good evening, my love," Dorian said softly. He was leaning against the
side of the Rolls Royce and Klaus bent quickly to glance inside, making
sure that no Bonham or - God forbid - James was hiding inside to make
sure he didn't injure their precious Master or, horror of horrors, make
him pay for the meal.

Klaus surveyed Dorian's clothes in approval and not a little relief.
He'd chosen to come in black slacks and a burgundy cashmere sweater;
even the long coat he wore over it was unremarkable. His golden curls
gleamed in the light falling out of the old mill's windows. He was
wearing them loose, and they tumbled across his shoulders in artful
disarray.

Because it was the purpose of this entire outing, the Major allowed
himself to evaluate the other man's aesthetic appeal. High, delicately
sculpted cheekbones, a nose almost as sharply aristocratic as Klaus'
own, a mouth elegantly swung, but not generous. His classically
handsome features might even have been on the ascetic side if it hadn't
been for the eyes… Large and intensively, vibrantly blue. Taken all
together, Dorian was undeniably attractive.

Deciding to give himself a bit more time before attempting to analyse
and evaluate the impact Eroica's appeal had on him personally, Klaus
pointed his chin towards the entrance of the mill. "Let's go."

The thief sighed. "Why is it that everything you say to me either
sounds like an insult or an order?"

Klaus lifted his eyebrows. "Why the hell do you think?"

"I suppose it *was* a stupid question." Another sigh. "I do appreciate
the butchness, so I shouldn't complain."

He appreciated the *butchness*? For a moment, Klaus wondered whether
this should be considered an affront, but then decided that it wasn't
worth the effort of an appropriate response that would only distract
him from more important matters. He contented himself with a disgusted
snort.

"You are so beautiful," Dorian said softly, sounding almost mournful.

Earlier that evening, he'd stared at his reflection for what had seemed
like a very long time. He was relatively even-featured - that was, no
particular feature distinguished itself in a negative way. His eyes
were perhaps rather unusual on account of the colour, and of course he
was in excellent physical shape, but that could hardly be it, and there
was nothing else. He didn't see it, whatever it was. He still couldn't
understand.

Klaus glared at Eroica with a vague kind of suspicion that was not
dispelled by the other man's peculiarly earnest and intense, almost
searching gaze.

After a moment, he shook his head impatiently and turned on his heel,
marching off to the restaurant. Part of him was still hoping that
Dorian would decide he'd had enough of being insulted and ordered
around, but he knew very well that it was a vain hope - he'd been
insulting the man for as long as he'd known him, and it had never made
him back off. Dorian didn't seem to have any pride at all.

And for the moment, it was better that he didn't change his mind. After
all, Klaus was trying to resolve something important.

Inside the small entrance area of the old mill, Klaus stopped and
looked around the circular room, orienting himself. The décor picked up
on the mill theme, using lots of stone and wood. An old millstone was
mounted high on the wall next to the entrance, and the Major gave it a
brief look to ensure that it was secured adequately. Most of the small
number of tables were already occupied. There was a cast-iron staircase
in the middle of the room, winding up along the side of a stone
fireplace open to four sides. There was no fire lit, but all the same
it made for a pleasing partition of the room.

Klaus chose a table and indicated his choice to a very polite and
formal waiter who had come hurrying up to him. The waiter began to
protest something about a prior reservation, but speedily decided that
he could still change the arrangement when Klaus skewered him with a
steely look.

The Major ignored Dorian until he'd sat down and ordered a bottle of
the house wine, but he was very aware that the other man had followed
him just as expected and now sat across from him.

"I appreciate your co-operation," Klaus forced out stiffly because he
had determined earlier that he would do his best to be polite. He
needed Eroica's co-operation if this was to work, and the truth was
that he *was* grateful, not for the fact the man had turned up at all -
which had not been in true doubt - but for his apparent and all but
unprecedented effort not to offend Klaus' sensibilities by his attire
or conduct. So far.

Dorian fiddled with the napkin and smoothed back his hair. He said
nothing. He didn't seem to be entirely comfortable.

Good. Neither was Klaus.

"This isn't some kind of NATO business meeting, is it?" the Earl asked
at long last.

Klaus snorted and didn't bother to answer. Stupid question - he wasn't
in the habit of inviting outside NATO contractors to dinner.

The reminder of the second theft the irritating man had perpetrated on
Klaus caused a brief surge of righteous anger to rise, but he forced it
down determinedly. He wasn't going to let himself be distracted. "Keep
it," he snapped brusquely. "It's an outdated model by now."

The arrival of the wine and menus thankfully interrupted the less than
pleasant conversation. The waiter poured a centimetre of wine into
Klaus' glass, and when Klaus had fulfilled his role in the little
ritual by tasting and approving the waiter's selection of vintage, he
looked up to find Dorian watching him with a hint of his usual
flirtatious smile playing around the corners of his mouth.

"What?" he snapped reflexively, barely managing to choke back the
extremely stupid second question why the man was looking at him like
that. He *knew* why the perverted queer was staring at him like that,
God damn him. He wished he didn't.

Dorian laughed. "Nothing, darling. Should I even bother to look at the
menu or are you going to order for me?"

Klaus struggled with himself and thought he managed to contain his
glower for the most part. This wasn't going well - he was too touchy,
too unnerved by the situation. He had to unwind, or this would all be
for nothing. Not acceptable. He was here for a purpose. He knew what he
had to do.

*So do it. Only a coward would back down from what he knows must be
done.*

And so he did not snap at the brightly smiling pervert or even glare at
him. Instead, he looked down at the elegantly leather-bound menu for a
moment and called upon his schooling as well as his courage, dredging
up a response that would have been appropriate if he'd been here with a
woman.

"If you wish," he said then, lifting his gaze and forcing a smile that
wanted to bare teeth, but didn't. "Perhaps you would prefer some help
with translating the entree, though. I do not know what you would like
best."

Blue eyes widened in astonishment. Dorian blinked down at the menu,
then up at Klaus again.

"Oh," he said after another unusually long pause. "I think I see." And
then a new kind of smile dawned slowly on his face, eliminating any
trace of the strange reticence and transforming Dorian's peculiar
reserve into an unabashed glow of radiant happiness.

Klaus quickly leafed past the soups and busied himself with selecting
something he might be able to force down past the constriction in his
throat. He hoped that by the time he had to look at the other man
again, he would have regained some measure of - decorum. Composure.
Whatever.

"Thank you," Eroica said softly, startling the Major into glancing
across the table briefly. The smile was gone, but the glow was still
there. Damn. "For offering to translate, I mean, although it's not
necessary. My German is pretty good, you know, and I normally steer
clear of anything I can't place. Do you know, a couple of days ago I
was subjected to a most unpleasant experience because James had somehow
succeeded in phoning ahead and ordering the daily special for all of
us. He thought it would be cheapest, although why, I can't imagine. It
was quite disastrous - the poor fellow had a nervous breakdown when the
bill arrived. He kept wailing 'and the call was twenty pfennigs!'
Anyway, the reason why I'm telling this story is that that was my first
introduction to Saumagen - though fortunately I didn't find out just
what it actually *was* until the day after."

Eroica hardly paused for breath before prattling on, apparently
requiring no further encouragement. He made Saumagen sound like a major
ecological hazard. The Major had never tried this particular dish
because the thought of eating a pig's stomach revolted him. The times
when it had been unthinkable to waste any part of an animal were past,
and he saw no reason to adhere to customs formed by a long-past and
outdated necessity - after all, he didn't run around in uncured animal
skins, either. However, for some reason he now felt the urge to defend
Saumagen against Eroica. He didn't really think that a man whose nation
would cheerfully consume porridge and baked beans for breakfast had
grounds for complaint.

He resisted the impulse for starting a defence of the unknown Saumagen,
though - it was illogical, and he was not here to fight. Although he
did seem to be reminding himself of that fact strangely often.

Fortunately, Dorian had now settled in for a long chatting session and
needed little encouragement from the Major to hold an amazingly
animated and far-ranging conversation, more or less completely by
himself. Klaus listened to amusing anecdotes and assorted excursions
into art history and related subjects without really hearing a word of
what Eroica was saying, letting the words wash over him like a soothing
shower. Dorian had a pleasant voice when he wasn't pulling that
atrocious flaming queer act.

There were many things Klaus didn't understand about Eroica, and why
the man chose to expose his perversion for the world to see was one of
the most incomprehensible points in the thief's character. Dorian
lacked for neither intelligence nor straight-forward pragmatism - the
fact that he was still free to pursue his dishonest trade after all
these years was more than sufficient testament to that. It would take
far less cunning to disguise Dorian's sexual preferences from the world
than to disguise the identity of the infamous thief Eroica. Instead,
the man flaunted himself and his perverted proclivities at every
opportunity, making a disgraceful spectacle of himself and even taking
pride in the fact.

By the time the waiter appeared to take their orders, Klaus found that
he had weathered the first crisis and was again reasonably fortified
against whatever was yet to come, prepared to carry on with the plan he
had devised. He had even steeled himself to order for Eroica if it
became necessary, but fortunately Dorian did not put his resolve to the
test, choosing to order for himself.

Dorian grew more animated as he talked, the last traces of his earlier,
uncustomary reserve dissipating completely. Familiar gestures and poses
crept back into his body language - he tilted his head artfully to the
side and smiled, sweeping his eyelashes down to glance up again almost
coyly; he leaned to the side with one hand supporting the chin; he
flipped back the tumble of golden curls with a negligent toss of the
head. Klaus gauged and evaluated the gestures and decided that they
were doubtless chosen for their presumed seductive value. He didn't
think Eroica was aware of doing it, but he was flirting again.

As long as Eroica kept the flirting to this level, though, the Major
could simply ignore it. It would be unreasonable to reprimand him when
he was already being unusually circumspect about it.

"And do you think he noticed? Not Nigel. You wouldn't believe the look
on his mother's face when she returned. Of course I wasn't there and so
I didn't actually see it, but I can just imagine -"

Klaus regarded Dorian as he flirted and sparkled and prattled and could
not find either anger or disgust for the other man in his heart. At the
bottom of all of Dorian's enraging pranks and capers, all of his
outrageous behaviour and shameless perversion, was a man Klaus found
almost endearing.

It wasn't the right word, of course. It didn't matter for now. He had
all night - he could do this as slowly as he needed to. "Endearing"
would do for now. It was enough to know that he could not truly despise
or even dislike Eroica, even if he did despise certain aspects of his
habitual behaviour and life-style. *Numerous* aspects. Damn near every
damned aspect -

"Klaus? You shouldn't frown, it'll give you wrinkles, you know."

"I don't understand you," the Major snapped.

Dorian blinked, very obviously taken aback. He never seemed to find the
need to conceal, or even dampen, his overly emotional responses.

"You could just ask," the thief said at last, no trace of the light
banter of his previous chit-chat left in his tone at all. Klaus
approved of the sobriety, of course, but found the renewed intensity of
the blue stare fixed on him as unsettling as ever. "I can't think of
anything I wouldn't tell you about me if you asked. And if it makes you
feel better, Klaus, I don't understand you very well, either."

Klaus snorted. "That much is obvious."

He reflected that he should probably put Eroica's offer of information
to the test and ask after the things he had stolen and stashed away
somewhere. Doubtless it would not accomplish the actual return of the
property in question to the rightful owners - even if the man *did*
tell the truth, he'd only have his employees relocate the booty before
Klaus could do anything about it - but at least it would establish how
serious Dorian was about this. This offer of information, that was.

Eroica was beginning to look faintly apprehensive when their dinner
arrived, relieving Klaus of the need for an immediate decision. He
would shelve the problem for later. Maybe he could have small teams of
alphabets standing by in England near the likely locations before he
actually asked Dorian where the man kept his unlawfully acquired
collection.

But that was something to be considered later. For now, Klaus had other
plans to carry out.

The food was excellent, as was only appropriate at these prices, but
not unexpectedly, the veal medallions and cognac sauce stuck to Klaus'
palate and refused to go down without considerable effort on his part.
He managed half of one and some potato croquettes before giving up;
Dorian was happily tucking into his ragout, though, so Klaus picked at
his salad half-heartedly until he judged the other man was as good as
finished.

"Have you ever been to Hamburg?" Klaus asked at random.

Dorian seemed wary and paused, the fork poised half-way to his mouth.
"Yes, I have. Why?"

"I think it is a very beautiful city. Don't you?" Klaus knew he was bad
at this and felt rather stupid, but forged on determinedly. "The
freight harbour is very interesting."

"The freight harbour." Eroica's mouth twitched as though he were trying
to hold back a smile. "I dare say it is. I haven't been there yet, but
I will make a point of visiting it now."

"What did you see, then?" Klaus tried again, refusing to back down.

This time Dorian took the bait and began to talk again, describing the
beauty of the Binnen Alster at length and digressing to enthuse about
the excellent shopping opportunities afforded by the designer
boutiques. He politely skirted the subject of art galleries and
museums, Klaus noted.

And because it was impossible to delay any longer, Klaus steeled
himself and inspected the Earl's slim hands as he waved them with
graceful enthusiasm to illustrate a point, going on to devote equally
careful scrutiny to the elegant throat, the quirk of an eyebrow and
quick accompanying grin, the attractive features and extravagant curls.
He proceeded to imagine those hands on his skin, imagined nuzzling that
throat and kissing that mouth, and waited.

His stomach tightened at the realisation that he could not in all
honesty claim that the mental images repelled him.

"Would you like dessert?" he asked abruptly, interrupting Dorian rather
rudely but unable now to worry about the niceties he had been so
determined to observe.

Eroica looked at him for a protracted moment before smiling and shaking
his head. "Not today, I think, but do go ahead if you -"

"No." Klaus turned in the seat and imperiously summoned the waiter, who
hurried up with commendable speed and brought the bill with equal
dispatch.

Dorian trailed the Major closely as he walked out of the restaurant,
but hesitated as they passed the parked Rolls.

"I will take you to your hotel," Klaus announced brusquely.

For some reason the statement seemed to bring back the hesitation the
Major had noticed earlier in the evening back into Eroica's expression.
He held the blue gaze levelly until the Earl nodded at last and then
led the way to his own car.

The drive to the hotel was silent, but thankfully not long. Klaus
circled around the back and found a conveniently near parking space in
a side street. Dorian glanced at him uncertainly and did not
immediately get out of the car. He did not smell quite as obtrusively
of roses as he often did, Klaus noted. Apparently, Eroica had gone out
of his way to be as inoffensive as was possible, being who he was. It
was a radical departure from his usual conduct.

At point-blank distance, the not unpleasant flowery scent was
complemented by the more natural, very faint scent of Dorian himself.
His eyes looked more grey than blue, although that might have been the
darkness more than the range, and his lips were warm. Beneath the coat
and sweater, his shoulder was not particularly muscular, but
unmistakably male.

Klaus was still not repelled. Nervous, yes, even apprehensive, but not
repelled. He was not repelled even when the mouth beneath his opened
and a tongue coaxed his own lips apart and slipped through.

It was not unpleasant to kiss Dorian. He hadn't been in the state of
mind to pay much attention to it on the one previous occasion he'd done
this, and now he found that it was not at all the way he had thought it
would be. Of course, he would have been hard pressed to say what - if
anything - he had expected; it was just that he had always found
kissing distinctly disagreeable before. It was unhygienic and had no
true function in the context of the sexual act, but now he almost
thought that maybe, if he followed this line of inquiry further, he
would find that it had some previously unsuspected advantages.

He pulled back and gathered his determination for the last step in the
investigation.

"I trust your room is satisfactory?"

Dorian looked a bit dazed, but did not take him long at all to see the
opening and seize it. "Oh, it is - very much so. Perhaps you would like
to see it?"

He nodded curtly and got out. They used the back stairs and encountered
no one on their way to the suite on the top floor which Eroica
occupied; Klaus was not even capable of feeling relief at this moment,
though.

Once he had gestured for Klaus to precede him into his rooms and closed
the door, Dorian smiled too brightly and gestured towards the easy
chairs grouped around a coffee table at one end of the suite's living
room. He was talking again, his voice too cheerful just as his
expression and gestures were too casual.

Klaus didn't bother to listen to him. Instead, he reached out and
snagged the other man, pulling him in tightly against his body and
burying a hand in his hair to tilt back the head.

Eroica melted into the Major's arms eagerly. His mouth was soft and
welcoming and seemed familiar already, and if Klaus closed his eyes, he
could almost have imagined that the person he was kissing was a woman.
Except that there had always been some element of reluctance when
kissing a woman, a reluctance that did not seem to be surfacing now -
and, of course, that a woman wouldn't be pressing what was quickly
turning into an erection against his leg.

First things first. Klaus pushed the intruding thoughts and memories
firmly back into their drawer and concentrated on the kiss again.
Dorian was once again claiming the initiative and the Major let him
explore his mouth and nibble at his lip. He seemed to be quite
experienced, which was no surprise, and yes, upon closer consideration
there did seem to be a distinct element of enjoyment in kissing him.
His taste was pleasant, and he smelled and felt exceedingly good from
this close - almost - tempting. No… Alluring.

Hands were now roaming over his back and combing through his hair, and
Klaus decided that he liked that, as well. He pushed Eroica up against
a convenient wall and drew back a little to slip a hand under his
sweater, encountering the slide of silk underneath cashmere.

A quick tug divested the other man of the sweater and the silk
tunic-like garment underneath. The Major tossed them to the side and
returned his attention to exploring Dorian's body. His built was slim,
but muscular - built for limberness and endurance, not strength. Eroica
trembled under his hands and gasped a little when he stroked down to
the line of fair hair beginning low on his stomach.

"Klaus?"

"What," he said distractedly, working a hand down between the fabric
and the heated skin.

He discovered that Dorian arched his back like a cat when he was
touched in a certain way. It looked very… well, for lack of a better
word - incensing. It encouraged Klaus to take further liberties, such
as pressing the thief back against the wall and taking his mouth again
while his hand dove further down, curling around the solid length of
the other man's erection. He freed his other hand in order to unfasten
the belt and pants and push the restraining fabric aside; the silk
briefs yielded to a tug and he looked down to watch what he was doing
to Dorian's cock and testicles. He experimented a bit and soon found a
combination of stroking, fondling and gentle squeezing that produced
the optimum effect.

Evidently, Dorian enjoyed the sensations, and Klaus did, too. So far
everything seemed rather unambiguous. It was time to take this to a
more serious level.

He stepped back, causing an inarticulate sound of protest to break from
the flushed and panting thief. Eroica grabbed for him and caught his
head in a surprisingly steely grip, his lips and teeth and tongue
eagerly devouring Klaus. He followed when the Major backed up another
step, and suddenly it was Klaus who was pressed against a wall, a
dishevelled and very obviously aroused Dorian alternately rubbing
against him and tearing off his clothes.

Concentrating on the sensations sparked by the other man's hands and
mouth on his skin made Klaus feel slightly dazed and the support at his
back was not unwelcome. He leaned back against it, closing his eyes;
when Dorian's hands slid between his thighs, he spread his legs
obligingly to allow them easier access.

Eroica's touch was gentle, but sure and quite inflaming even through
the fabric of his trousers. Klaus opened his eyes again and looked at
the person who now had one hand fondling his genitals and the other
sliding down the back of his boxers, and it made no difference to the
feelings coursing through him that the person in question was male.

And even that was a lie, because Klaus knew very well that if he'd been
with a woman, he wouldn't have wanted or allowed her to do anything
like this - he'd never liked being touched this way. So far, his
infrequent sexual encounters had been driven more by a vague sense of
obligation than anything else; he had always found the act unsatisfying
and, on occasion, even unpleasant. Sex had always seemed enormously
overrated.

Unfortunately, the reason that now presented itself for this was not
one the Major would have chosen, had he been given a choice.

"Do you have any idea how lovely you are like this?" The low, heated
voice was unwelcome and distracting and Klaus growled, turning his head
away. Amazingly enough, Eroica took the hint for once and shut up.

Or - perhaps more likely - it was simply that now, his mouth was
otherwise occupied, steadily working its way down his body, detouring
to tongue and bite his nipples. Nobody had done that before, and its
effect was quite astonishing. It felt as though his body was lighting
up from the inside, waking to a new way of experiencing sensation.
Every inch of skin, every nerve ending was sensitised to a ridiculous
degree, yearning to be touched. And somehow, Dorian always seemed to
know just where to stroke and fondle in order to drive the restless
ache higher, to make the electric pleasure bite deeper.

Klaus wasn't the most qualified to judge, but even so he was fairly
certain that the flamboyant thief was every bit as great an expert at
this as he was at picking locks and disarming alarm systems. It felt as
though he was doing things with his tongue that should have been
anatomically impossible. And his hands were everywhere, stroking the
inside of his thighs, his genitals, his buttocks, gently stroking up
behind his testicles…

"I have waited so long for this, and I want to make love to you so
badly..." Dorian sighed and then laughed a little, but even though the
sound was almost ridiculously light and giggly, there seemed to be an
undertone of true anxiety there. "And now - Klaus, you have to tell me
what you want because I don't know, I always thought I did but now - I
only know what I want and -"

"I want you to fuck me."

Eroica froze. Huge blue eyes stared up at Klaus. "What?"

"You heard me." There was no use in doing things by halves. He wanted
this experiment to be conclusive. He was through second-guessing
himself.

Klaus bent down to take off his shoes and finish undressing, forcing
the other man to scramble back a little. Strangely enough, Dorian
looked hesitant, not at all like someone who thought the suggested
course of action was entirely recommendable.

With a mental shrug, Klaus crossed over into the bedroom and sat on the
large double-bed. He really couldn't be bothered to deal with Eroica's
unexpected second thoughts at this time. He was more than occupied with
beating down his own.

It didn't take Dorian that long to resolve whatever the problem had
been and follow. Before Klaus had fully settled on the covers, the
thief was in the room and hectically sorting through drawers, coming up
with a small tube of what was obviously lubricant. Not quite as
unprepared for this eventuality as he was pretending, was he?

Klaus smiled cynically and concentrated, focusing his mind on the
objective of the moment and his body's state of arousal. As long as he
didn't think, this wouldn't be any problem at all. No problem at all.

"Why don't we - Klaus, don't you think you'd rather -"

"No," he snapped. "Get on with it."

Dorian crouched in front of him, his hands petting and stroking Klaus'
thighs almost as though he wasn't aware of doing it.

"All right," he whispered at last, leaning forward for another
lingering kiss. Klaus laid back across the bed and the other man
followed him down, covering his body with his own. A thigh eased
between his and pressed against him intimately, causing sharp arcs of
arousal to spike through the Major's body.

When he slid out from beneath the other man and started to turn over,
Eroica's hand on his shoulder stopped him. "I want to see you, my love.
You are so beautiful."

"Stop saying that," Klaus grumbled, sounding half-hearted to his own
ears. Had he really begun to believe that, to Dorian, it was true? How
peculiar. It was irrelevant, of course. It shouldn't make a difference.

There was a tense moment when Eroica pushed a slick finger inside of
him, but Klaus directed a silent diatribe at himself for his cowardice
and forced himself to relax as much as he could. It took every bit of
concentration he could summon not to think about what he was doing,
about what he was letting another man do to him, and for a long moment
of almost-panic, he thought that he simply couldn't do this, that he
was not strong enough to let this happen and not think, not fight off
the touch -

He stared at the graceful, slender body poised above his own, at the
smouldering blue eyes, the tousled mass of golden curls, the dazed and
joyful look of lust in the man's - in *Dorian's* - face. Dorian.
Eroica. Dorian. He repeated the name to himself like a mantra,
concentrating.

And then, the most extraordinary burst of fiery pleasure exploded in
him, coiling outwards from Dorian's invasive fingers like a spiral of
annihilating sensation. He was vaguely aware that he was gasping for
air, arching his hips off the bed.

"Say my name, Klaus," the man in bed with him coaxed hopefully, just as
the second conflagration overtook him.

If Eroica wanted to hear it, there was no reason not to oblige him. It
wasn't that difficult. Everything was different, and Klaus found that
he could say the man's name without turning it into a threat or a
curse. He could surrender himself to sensation, relaxing into another's
touch and meeting another's desire with his own.

It truly wasn't that difficult, and he was good at not thinking during
sex.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This was something Dorian never would have expected. Not that he hadn't
occasionally allowed himself the odd fantasy… But not only had he
gotten his love into bed, not only had the man taken the initiative,
but he was actually demanding to be fucked! Dorian had hardly dared
dream of this in case it destroyed the rest of the fantasy by being too
high-flown, and he had not even in his wilder and more improbable
scenarios imagined things happening this quickly - and certainly not
now, after learning about -

But he didn't want to think about that now, not now, when his love was
at last panting and dark-eyed with lust for him. Steep learning curve?
Hah. The man was like a vertical take-off aircraft - if Dorian hadn't
needed to touch and taste him so badly, he could have handily leaned
back and left everything to his once so reluctant love.

To think that he'd imagined Klaus would be shy and hesitant at first.
The man had had his hand down Dorian's pants so fast he could compete
for the Olympic gold.

Dorian positioned himself very carefully, hesitating for as long as he
could possible get away with before beginning to push himself inside of
his lover's body. He still wasn't sure he should be doing this. What if
Klaus didn't like it? What if it brought back the wrong kind of
memories and he decided that he never wanted to make love to Dorian
again? What if -

Oh God. He felt so good - and the mere thought that this was Klaus at
last, not one of a hundred interchangeable willing bodies but *Klaus*,
his Major, his unique, irascible, beautiful love…

He caressed his lover's thighs and stomach with trembling hands,
curling a hand around his flagging erection and stroking it back to
full firmness while forcing himself not to move. The expression on his
Major's face was inscrutable; he couldn't tell if he'd hurt him or not,
but he wasn't about to take any risks. This was going to be as good for
Klaus as he could possibly make it. He wanted him to keep coming back
for more, more of this and more of every other way of making love that
Dorian knew, and some he would learn especially for him.

"I love you, Major," he said softly and watched his love's eyes cloud
over with an emotion he couldn't decipher. Not quite anger, but close.

Time to put this show on the road. He pulled back just a little and
every muscle in Klaus' stomach tensed immediately, outlined against the
skin in perfect rigidity. Oh God. How could anyone have a body like
this and the face to match and not believe it when he was told he was
beautiful? Even his stomach was beautiful - even his feet, and his
knees, his elbows - every damn part of him, everything -

A small thrust and when he pulled back out again his love stayed far
more relaxed. Dorian risked a longer stroke, and a longer one after
that, and almost forgot everything else in the feeling of Klaus' body
hot and tight around him, thrumming subtly with his lover's heartbeat,
opening for him...

He had to let go of Klaus' cock and grip his hips with both hands as he
settled into a steadily accelerating rhythm. There was barely enough
thought left to lift and angle just *so* to bump against the hidden
prostate - but when he did, Klaus gave a choked gasp and his perfect
form lifted in a wave of motion as smooth and natural as a wave rolling
to shore, a wave that drew his body upwards in an effortlessly graceful
curve.

The sight finished off whatever hint of rationality Dorian might have
had left. After that, all that he knew was heated skin beneath his
hands, the inflaming sight of perfection sweat-slicked and panting in
arousal, Klaus' body moving in delirious rhythm with his own, the
boundaries between them no longer entirely clear. Small sounds of
passion and need escaped him as he pounded into the body of the only
man for whom he had ever felt quite this kind of desire, and when he
finally fell into the blaze of excruciating completion with his lover's
legs wrapped firmly around his middle and eyes burning in wild green
fire staring back into his, he knew once again, but now with an
entirely new and astonishing, marrow-deep chill of fear, that he was
irrevocably lost.

He hadn't known it could feel like this to love someone. He hadn't
known it could be so horrifying. He'd been in love so often that he had
lost count, but he had never felt this. Why had he never known how
terrible and frightening it could feel - why hadn't he realised what he
was doing when he had fallen in love with the Major? He should have
known that this was not a man he could easily and safely love, that
this was a man who would suck him in and leave him bound and tangled
and full of this exquisite passionate pain in his heart -

His searching hand found warm wetness on his lover's stomach and his
heart burst with almost equal parts of joy and pain as he dove forward
to take his darling's mouth in a deep kiss, making love to him with
every stroke of the tongue.

He was afraid to stop kissing him. More than anything else he wanted to
curl up with his love and fall asleep in his arms, but he knew that the
chances of that happening were very slim indeed, and he was afraid to
stop this kiss, afraid to withdraw from Klaus' body and clean them both
off, afraid to do anything at all except draw out this last, fleeting
moment of perfection for as long as he possibly could. Once this moment
slipped through his fingers, anything could happen. And Dorian didn't
want anything to happen, not now, not when he finally had everything he
wanted within his grasp, in his bed warm and pliant and responsive
beneath his hands and mouth -

When it came, the change was obvious in every line of Klaus' loosely
sprawled body, in every fibre of his being, even in the taste of his
mouth beneath Dorian's. Subtle, but inevitable and unstoppable as the
storm gathering on the far horizon. Gathering momentum, drawing
together… foreboding and threatening and even, somehow, darkly
beautiful, because this, too, was Klaus.

Languid response turned to cool acceptance and then to impatient
rejection as his love pushed Dorian back roughly, breaking the kiss and
separating their bodies almost at the same time. If it hurt, he gave no
sign, sitting up and pushing wildly tousled black hair back into some
semblance of smoothness.

Dorian held his breath anxiously, but Klaus wasn't looking at him. His
brow was furrowed and his mouth set in a grim line, but no explosion
seemed imminent as he drew himself together to sit in an almost prim
posture, drawing up a portion of coverlet to drape himself in.

A dawning smile at the so-characteristic action turned into a dismayed
frown at the jarring realisation that Dorian's temperamental love had
very probably had good reason to develop his heavy streak of
prudishness. Dorian's stomach lurched briefly but he forced down the
surge of nausea, watching his Major.

Minutes passed and Klaus didn't move, merely sitting up with his back
as straight as an iron bar and his eyes straight ahead, expression
locked into a strange kind of grim contemplation. It was, noted Dorian,
an extremely military posture. It was quite an achievement to look
severely, spit-and-polish military mere moments after being fucked, but
Klaus pulled it off brilliantly. The man had faint bite marks on his
neck and shoulders and even around the left nipple, his mouth was
slightly swollen and his straight hair was tangled in the unmistakable
way that announced someone had been burying their hands in it, and even
so he managed to look as unapproachable and frosty as though sex was
something that happened to other people.

Dorian winced at the unfortunate phrasing of his own thoughts. Perhaps
he ought to say something, try to touch his Major... or maybe that
would be exactly the wrong thing to do. Unfortunately, he had only a
very vague idea of what might be going through the man's lovely but
thick-skulled head right now, and any act that called attention to him
could well turn out to be a rather bad idea.

Another minute or so dragged on and Dorian sighed, resigning himself to
an outburst of temper or even a physical attack. It couldn't be worse
than sitting here in silence and watching his Major stare into space
with that severe line graven around his mouth.

"Klaus? My love? Is everything…"

He trailed off as his Major turned to fix him with a steely green glare
that was uncannily reminiscent of a lamp being shined into the eyes of
the prisoner interviewed at gunpoint.

"How did you know?"

Dorian blinked and ran a hand through his hair, posing automatically
because he wasn't sure what was going on and didn't know what else to
do. He hated feeling uncertain and insecure… Fortunately it happened
very seldom. "Know what, darling?"

There was no immediate answer, but the glare continued as thin nostrils
flared and Klaus' mouth twisted in distaste. "That I was - that I *am*
- gay. Queer. A pervert like you."

Hmm. Was this a positive development or not? Dorian's heart wanted to
leap with joy at the implication that further encounters of the
intimate kind might not be out of the question in his Major's mind… but
then, that look of disgust did not bode very well, did it…

"Well, actually, love, it didn't really happen like that," Dorian
drawled, falling back on one of his stock patterns of behaviour in the
attempt to cover up his uncertainty. He stretched a little and widened
his eyes fetchingly. He refrained from fluttering his eyelashes,
though. Somehow he didn't think Klaus would be able to appreciate it
properly in his present mood. "All I knew was that I had to have you. I
can't say that I cared whether you were gay or straight or something in
between. It didn't seem to matter."

"As long as I slept with you." Flat voice. Cold look. Uh-oh.

Dorian tried a flirtatious smile. "Essentially, yes."

Derisive snort. "Interesting logic, Eroica. Sometimes I wonder how you
managed to survive in your line of business for so long." Pause. "So…
It was just a… *fortuitous* coincidence, then."

"No," Dorian protested hotly. "It was fate. What do artificial
categories like homo- or bi- or heterosexual mean in the face of two
souls that were destined for -"

"If you give me one more word of that drivel, I will hit you."

"Why are you always so violent? We just had wonderful sex and already
you're insulting and threatening me again. This is what they call
domestic violence, you know." Dorian knew he sounded petulant, but he
couldn't help it. *Some* people made everything so bloody difficult!

There was a long pause.

"You," the Major said at last, "Are a felonious, unprincipled, wilful,
thoughtless and utterly infantile pervert."

Dorian glared back indignantly. "And you are a brutish, arrogant, bossy
and frigid bundle of denial!"

The silence stretched.

"Yes," Klaus said after what seemed like a very long time, sounding
stiff and strangely formal. "I believe we are both correct."

Dorian let his head droop to the side, making his hair fall forward in
a long golden curtain to obscure part of his face. He knew this was a
very effective pose, and because he'd even added his best look of
smouldering anger and hurt defiance, he was more than a little put out
when his Major ignored the effort entirely and simply got up, drawing
the entire feather blanket away with him and spilling Dorian onto his
side.

"Fuck!" Dorian said when the bathroom door had closed firmly behind his
complicated and completely blanket-swathed darling.

He felt like breaking something valuable, but settled for kicking the
mattress. Fuck, fuck, *fuck*! He'd handled that incredibly badly. In
his eagerness to score a point in a game, he had missed the glaringly
obvious fact that of course his Major would never try to play this kind
of game. Dorian hadn't meant what he'd said, and he didn't like to
think that Klaus truly believed that what he'd called him adequately
reflected who he was, perhaps with an addendum of something like "but
he is punctual and efficient and extremely good at his job".

How depressing. Really, the poor man was incredibly fortunate that
Dorian loved him. He could see that he had his work cut out for him...

And strangely enough, Dorian found his ever-buoyant mood swing upwards
again at the thought of the challenge ahead of him as he turned to bury
his face in a sheet carrying his lover's - his lover's! - subtle but
inimitable scent.

They had a long way yet to go, he and his prickly and wounded love, but
there was less doubt than ever in his heart that they would find a love
together that was so beautiful all the world would pale before it.

And in the meantime, the sex was going to be great.

Epilogue

"Major Eberbach," the Chief said, drawing the title and name out as
though testing their probable verity by taste. A disgusting habit.

"Chief," the Major shot back tersely. He forced himself not to fidget
and lit himself a cigarette instead, ignoring the dark little scowl his
superior gave him.

"That is a deplorable habit, you know," the man opined. "Poison for the
lungs. In ten years you'll hardly be able to draw a breath."

"No doubt. Almost as bad as sugar and cholesterol, I hear."

The Chief, whose addiction to Milka chocolate was fabled throughout
NATO headquarters, scowled, making his eyes withdraw deeper into the
porcine folds of his face. "Pleasantries aside, Major. I trust you have
followed my *recommendation* and arranged for the matter we spoke of?"

Klaus rolled his eyes. The Chief's so-called recommendation had been an
entirely undisguised order, and he saw no reason for this ridiculous
beating about the bush. "If you are inquiring whether I have had my men
contact Eroica to employ his services for the assignment - as I was
ordered - then the answer is yes. Although I still hold that -"

"Excellent. It is my hope that in time, even you may be brought to
overcome your limited worldview and childish prejudices - and until you
do, you will just have to cope. Might be a while yet. Good luck, then -
and by the way, how is little Agent G doing these days?"

Pretending not to have heard the inquiry, Klaus stalked to the door. He
suspected the old queer only asked after his darling little
cross-dressing G in order to annoy him, anyway. Well, superiors weren't
there to be liked. Klaus was certain that most, if not all members of
his alphabet regarded him as the bane of their existence, almost more
so than the enemies they were working to defeat. As long as they were
efficient, that was perfectly all right with Klaus.

"A through F, P, Z, in my office," he barked as he swept through the
open office space of the alphabet. They jumped to obey with alacrity.

Klaus hadn't seen Eroica again after leaving him stretched out on the
disarrayed hotel bed in Eberbach; the thief had been wearing an odd
little smile and Klaus had had to suppress the brief urge to cure him
of his smugness, but had left quickly and without a word instead. In
spite of what he had feared, Dorian hadn't appeared at the castle again
in any of his guises and had already been gone when the Horrible
Hedwiga had gone to call on him the next day. He must be on a tight
schedule, Klaus supposed. So many museums to rob, so many priceless
jewels to steal…

In the intervening weeks, Klaus had attempted to accustom himself to
the thought that he was queer. He hadn't made too much progress; it
still seemed like a terrible stroke of injustice to him. It was fine
for people like Dorian, who had no principles in any case, but it
wasn't fair that *he* should be saddled with this. It didn't fit into
his plans at all.

Not that it was going to make all that big of a difference when you got
right down to it. Klaus was going to marry eventually, and he was going
to have children, or at the very least one child to carry on the line.
That much had never been in question - it was simply his duty.

And he wasn't about to start sleeping with men. That was completely out
of the question. The unfortunate fact that he was queer was one thing -
he could live with the knowledge, he supposed. It didn't have to make a
difference. He didn't have to think about it.

It would be quite another thing to actually act upon the knowledge, and
not only did Klaus have no intention of doing so, but he had found, to
his immense relief, that he also had absolutely no wish to do so. He'd
monitored himself very carefully, and he had not felt as much as a pang
of desire for any man he had come in contact with since he'd grown
aware of his bothersome predilection. Eroica didn't count. He was a
special case.

No, it really didn't have to make a difference at all. In fact, Klaus
had completely forgotten about it for long stretches of time when he
was working and had other things to think about. He'd never been much
bothered by sexual urges - he supposed his libido was simply naturally
low, which was very convenient. Nothing had to change.

Nothing much. Eroica... Well.

Klaus wasn't sure how this would affect his never exactly stable or
harmonious working relationship with the flamboyant thief, but they
were both professionals - of a sort, in Eroica's case - and he didn't
doubt he could somehow bring Dorian to do what was expected of him. The
constant innuendo and blatant overtures could hardly become any worse
than they had been before. Or so he hoped.

And maybe, just maybe, if the Major could be certain that the other man
understood what was being offered and, more importantly, what was not…
Maybe it was not entirely out of the question to sleep with men every
once in a while. With one man, at any rate. He'd have to wait and see
and be very careful.

Disclaimer:
Tyrian, Dorian, Klaus, his father and butler and all other
Eroica-related things are sole property of Yasuko Aoike. What I have
done to them is no fault of hers. The other characters don't exist,
either, and while the town of Eberbach does, I have felt free to
rearrange it and dabble in its history.

Notes: My
thanks go to my beta readers, Theresa, Ruth S., Masae and Lisa, who
encouraged me, helped me with Eroica details, and made this story much
better than it was.

Peripeteia:
sudden change of fortunes; in drama, the climax and turning
point of a tragedy, leading into the catastrophe; also used for other
narrative forms

Peripeteia

The dark silhouette of the Eberbach family seat rose majestically
against the muted fire of sundown reflected on clouds. The castle was
relatively young; the original Eberbach seat, built in the 11th
century, had been razed to the ground in the 16th century when the
infamous Tyrian Persimmon had shouldered his way into the bloodline.
Reportedly, Tyrian's new relations had not been at all sorry to see the
last of him when he'd been simultaneously stabbed and blown up with his
ship before construction of the new castle had even begun.

Since Tyrian had had the bad taste to let his treasure sink together
with what remained of his person and ship, the Eberbachs had fallen
back on tried and true methods, doing their best to extort, rob,
confiscate and otherwise acquire the funds to restore them to their
former influence and glory. This process had taken well over two
centuries; in the end, it had been the courtier and fop Walter von dem
Eberbach, regarded as an unfortunate embarrassment by most of his
contemporary relatives, who'd succeeded both in this and in building a
suitably ostentatious castle. He believed in living in style, and that
he had been forced to wed the daughter of a merchant to achieve his
goal hadn't bothered him; he solved the problem of social embarrassment
by not letting his wife into public at all, and the line had - by such
glorious means - been carried on in fitting pomp.

Before and since, the line had produced many illustrious offshoots that
had been known variously as plunderers and pillagers, ruthless
criminals, brutal tyrants, violently unprincipled hedonists, and even
daring heroes… sometimes as all of these things at once. Today, having
weathered the victories and defeats of several more centuries, the
family was once again expanding - growing, and presumably strengthening.

The youngest offshoot of the main branch of the exceedingly tenacious
line sat in his car in the driveway and stared at the invitingly
illuminated windows of the castle's main wing, built by the unusually
sedate, if hedonistic and unprincipled Walter and financed by
Elisabetha "Lisel" von dem Eberbach's father, successful spice merchant
Jupp Mueller.

This particular Eberbach was not a criminal, but he had lied, betrayed,
stolen and killed and would likely do so again with equal lack of
remorse. He was not unprincipled, but ruthlessness and brutality were
traits he could not in good conscience disown; he kept them
well-shackled and serving his sense of duty and justice, but there were
times when he imagined he felt them straining at the stern bonds his
will imposed on them, recalling the ages past when they had raged
unchecked through blood of his blood, though flowing in other veins.

He'd lost track of how long he'd been sitting there, disconnected
family facts flitting aimlessly through his mind. The sun had dipped
behind the eastern tower some time before. Klaus was fairly certain it
had been dusk when he arrived on the castle grounds.

He had a splitting headache. A triple agent of uncertain provenance
who'd been working for no one but himself at the time had smashed his
head hard against a very solid brick wall a couple of days ago, but
Klaus didn't attempt to make himself believe that this was the reason.

Weddings. Klaus loathed weddings.

A car was coming up the driveway behind him. He'd heard the gate open a
minute ago, but hadn't really paid attention. The realisation that he
was neglecting to pay an appropriate amount of attention to his
surroundings shook him from his unproductive brooding, and he quickly
stubbed out his latest cigarette, got out of the car and was already
striding towards the entrance with his suitcase in hand by the time the
latest arrival pulled up behind him.

Klaus didn't turn around. He didn't care who it was and he didn't want
to acknowledge their presence. If he did, he would have to greet them.

The butler opened the door just as Klaus set foot on the last step up
to the portal, looking as staid and impassive as always. Klaus wondered
how long the old man had been watching him from the pantry window.

"Sir," the butler intoned sombrely. "It is good to have both you and
the Baron here again. Your father will be pleased to see you."

Klaus chose not to respond to the obvious lie. It was better to start
this ordeal out on some kind of good foot.

"Hmm," he said instead in an only vaguely grumpy tone.

A young girl he didn't recognise edged past the butler respectfully and
took the suitcase from Klaus. After a brief tug at his briefcase and a
muted growl on his part, she retreated hastily. Klaus automatically
noted that she was approximately sixteen or seventeen years old, one
point six seven meters in height, a bit on the plump side but not
remarkably so, her hair dyed dark red but mousy brown by nature. Her
eyes were grey and she wore untinted contact lenses. Her nose was small
and extremely tip-tilted and would be very hard to disguise.

The unidentified girl - presumably a schoolgirl hired as temporary help
- quailed beneath the butler's rebuking stare, though she was evidently
still uncertain what her error had been. Apparently she didn't
distinguish between luggage in general and briefcases in particular.

Klaus relented and tossed his briefcase into her arms, causing her to
all but drop the suitcase and squeal a little in surprise. Klaus pushed
past her and the astonished-looking butler, shrugging out of his coat
and handing it to the latter as he passed.

There was nothing in his briefcase except empty paper, several pencils
sharpened to the point where they could be used as offensive weapons,
and a supply of cigarettes. Klaus wasn't about to bring secret
documents into a castle filled with relatives, servants and assorted
other rabble. There would be plenty of other things to worry about.

Such as the person waiting for him inside.

"I see you are still wearing your hair in that slovenly and unaesthetic
manner," Baron Theodor Walter von dem Eberbach said from across the
hall. His voice was quiet, but cut through the distance between the
door and the foot of the stairs effortlessly. It was the same tone he
used with everyone except his closest friends - an unmistakably
commanding tone, precise and cool, resonant with the steely certainty
that he would be obeyed.

Klaus could feel his nostrils flaring and his upper lip beginning to
curl into a snarl. The strength of his instinctive reaction took him by
surprise and he bit the inside of his cheek until he tasted blood,
clamping down on the unreasonable surge of defiant anger. *He has the
right to command you,* he recited to himself. *He is your father and
the head of the house, and you will not defy him. Not more than is
absolutely necessary.*

"That is because I still see no reason to change it," he said once he
had his temper back under control.

The present Baron and head of the Eberbach family slowly walked across
the crest inlaid in the parquet floor, every movement suffused with
dignity and breeding. His hair was completely white, the colour of
frost in the first ray of morning light; as always, he was impeccably
groomed and looked both distinguished and at ease in one of his
tastefully expensive designer tuxedos. Klaus hadn't seen him wearing
anything else in quite a while, and somehow, it had always seemed to be
the most natural attire for his father outside of a uniform.

For a brief, incredulous moment after the Baron stopped in front of
him, Klaus thought his father would hold out a hand or maybe even give
him a clap on the shoulder. To discourage such an action, however
unlikely, Klaus stood up straight and clasped his hands together behind
his back in a stance just short of being at parade-rest.

His father took a long moment to inspect him from head to toe, lips
compressed in vague disapproval. Klaus didn't know what had prompted
the disapproval this time, but he had decided a very long time ago that
he would stop being unsettled by the uncertainty. He supposed that
there had been too many definite reasons that had at some point melded
into a perpetual, if subtle state; inappropriate behaviour, the
occasional less than excellent grade, another boy or his parents
complaining of an attack - an attack that had, in the official version,
inevitably been completely without provocation - a broken window or
even, that one time, a kitten not hidden from discovery quite as well
as Klaus had hoped... Yes, there had been more than enough definite
reasons.

By now, the point at which he'd stopped trying to explain or change his
father's habitual censure lay so far back that he hardly remembered
what cringing beneath the cold stare of Eberbach senior had felt like.
It was not in Klaus' nature to cringe, and he had never done it well.
It had probably been the one redeeming quality his father had found in
him back then.

"Most of the guests arrived yesterday or this morning," his father said
at last. "I have received numerous inquiries as to your whereabouts."

"I am certain everyone understood that international politics seldom
wait for the convenience of family festivities," Klaus replied just as
coolly and evenly.

"Anton is younger than you, you know."

The command tone had now hardened into open rebuke and Klaus stood
ramrod-straight, trying not to lift his chin too high for the stance.
No more defiance than absolutely necessary.

"I am aware of that," he said icily. Perhaps he should have kept
completely silent, but that could have been interpreted as a statement,
as well.

"I have assured the Countess von Thurnis that you will be happy to show
her daughters around Eberbach tomorrow."

Klaus tried not to grimace. He'd intimidated the Thurnis girls out of
what little wits they possessed the first time he'd been thrown
together with them, but they were even more frightened of their mother
and dared not resist her relentless matchmaking attempts. Klaus had
tried to intimidate the mother, but had failed dismally. Equipped with
a bullet-proof designer suit and reduplicated several hundred times,
the woman would have made an unstoppable secret weapon. The Soviets
would have been married off and cowed or fleeing to hide away in
Siberia within a year.

"Yes, sir," Klaus gritted.

"Now for heaven's sake go change into something appropriate. You are
late enough as it is."

Klaus nodded smartly and waited for his father to step aside before
proceeding straight to the stairs, marching up the curving staircase
and down the corridor to his room with the same steady, measured tread
he had always used in these halls. Slower than a run - because running
was not appropriate - and quicker than a regular walk - because
dawdling was not allowed.

He desperately wished for a pressing international crisis to arise and
call him away.

*Courage,* the old, familiar inner voice whispered to him, calling up
walls of ice and iron to hide behind, conjuring forth strength from the
bitter joy of defiance. *When the battle is upon you, fight to the
death and admit no defeat.*

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Weddings! Dorian loved weddings. Everyone got out their very showiest
jewels and didn't worry about the emeralds clashing with the rubies,
because for an occasion like this one, cousin Ethel would be turning up
in her diamond tiara, and they really couldn't let her think she had
somehow managed to put one over on them, now could they?

Such determined cheer and ostentation! Such delightful indulgence in
champagne… And such large and only partially familiar crowds of
relatives close and remote, friends old and new, colleagues,
neighbours, acquaintances, thieves…

Lovely. Perfectly lovely.

Especially when the marriage in question was that of one Anna Juliane
zu Herforthsweiler and one Anton Waldkirch von dem Eberbach, a cousin
to the mouth-wateringly lovely and frustratingly elusive Major of
similar name. *Especially* when the marriage in question was being
celebrated in the family seat of the Eberbachs, which also held "The
Man in Purple", the quite valuable portrait of Tyrian, ancestor of the
Eberbachs, who incidentally happened to bear an astounding likeness to
his choleric but delectable descendant.

And most especially when, in order to be able to entertain such an
impressive number of guests in style, an almost as impressive number of
additional servants had been engaged for the occasion.

Really, when presented with such an opportunity, it would practically
be a crime not to take it up. It had been child's play for Dorian to
secure a temporary job as waiter and general factotum, in spite of the
minor impediment that his command of German was still somewhat less
than complete. What did that matter, however, when he was not only
amazingly handsome but also equipped with a multitude of talents,
something which even the crusty old Eberbach butler - though happily
unaware of be-wigged and disguised Dorian's true identity - had been
able to see at first glance?

Though the butler very likely hadn't counted upon the particularly
honed set of talents which had allowed Dorian to pass through a number
of locked doors on his way to the gallery displaying the pictures of
the Eberbach ancestors…

And there he was. "The Man in Purple", larger than life and almost as
beautiful as the Major in the flesh.

Dorian took a careful look at the grain of the painting to ensure
himself he wasn't about to go to this much trouble for a cheap copy.
No, it was the real thing - apparently the Eberbachs didn't hold with
hanging fakes on the walls while keeping the originals in bank safes,
which was a practice Dorian himself deplored deeply for obvious reasons.

The frame was hooked up to an alarm system which was, in its turn,
connected to the main unit down in the cellar. Dorian had already had a
look at this while he was on an errand to fetch a selection of wines -
the cellars were a labyrinth of narrow corridors, claustrophobic
cubicles and echoing caverns, and no one had been surprised it had
taken him a bit longer than it might have to find his way back with the
Riesling and Burgundy he'd been sent for.

The alarm system wouldn't give him too much trouble, and he'd already
arranged for a catering truck manned with his staff to arrive at an
appropriate time to spirit the successfully filched painting off the
estate. He had several hours left… The perfect opportunity to wander
around Klaus' ancestral home, imagine what it had been like to grow up
here, and maybe catch a glimpse or two of the man himself as he scowled
at the guests and did his best to make certain no one forgot themselves
so far as to actually enjoy the party.

Really, the man was a terrible grouch… If only he hadn't been so
absolutely irresistible at the same time.

Dorian hadn't chosen to fall in love with Major Klaus Heinz von dem
Eberbach of NATO, and if he had had even an idea of the amount of
longing and pain the man would cause him over the years, he might have
chosen to simply concede victory to the other man and run when he'd
first clashed swords with him. On the other hand - to be entirely
truthful, he probably wouldn't have been able to resist taking a closer
look at someone so alluring that somehow, the sheer power of attraction
completely eclipsed every other consideration.

The man was obnoxious, rude, brutal, and in every way impossible. His
subordinates were scared to death of him. He insulted and even
physically assaulted Dorian at every turn, repulsed his advances,
called him names and expressed his contempt and disgust. And Dorian
kept coming back for more.

Why? Well… For one thing, the Major was the embodiment of perfect male
beauty. His every move was at once a joy and torture to watch… such
smooth, muscular grace and unconscious, natural elegance... But that
wasn't all - there was still something more. What was it?

As he made his way back down to the kitchen to fulfil his waiter duties
for another two hours or so, Dorian pondered this question at length.
He'd done so often before, but had never come to an entirely
satisfactory conclusion.

For one thing, he was capable and efficient, but not dry and boring as
such men usually were. Fearless, daring, brave - so focussed, so
intense, so utterly determined… Once you had won someone like the
Major, they would be yours forever, body and soul. It was strange, but
the Major was the first and only man with whom Dorian could imagine
entering a relationship with any level of commitment. There was no
choice in the Major's case - this kind of man knew no compromises.
Besides, Dorian could not imagine ever having enough of him, or even
wanting to stray while he had this man in his bed.

Dorian was not so shallow as to attach undue importance to the merely
sexual aspect of a relationship with his reluctant love, of course. It
went without saying.

With that fact clearly established, Dorian allowed himself to expand on
the topic a bit in the privacy of his own mind. His mouth went dry just
contemplating what someone like the Major would be like in bed. All
that determination and perfectionism, all the explosive energy, the
unswerving focus - all of that turned to the purpose of driving Dorian
insane with desire… He'd be hesitant at first, perhaps even a bit
awkward, embarrassed at his own inexperience, shy… But Dorian would be
only too glad to teach him how to touch and taste and -

"Hey, you, Faulpelz! Where the hell have you been? Here, take that to
the reception in the front parlour, and come straight back here when
those are gone! Don't forget the empty glasses, either."

A gigantic tray of filled champagne flutes was thrust into his arms,
rudely dispersing his fantasy of his beautiful love's steep learning
curve. What did *Faulpelz* mean? His German lessons had managed to
skirt all of the truly useful terms. Most frustrating. On second
thought, maybe it was just as well.

After a moment of panicked balancing and a dirty look at the back of
the Eberbach employee now hurrying off to hassle other hapless waiters,
Dorian sniffed and took himself and the horribly unwieldy and heavy
tray off to the front parlour. Unlike most of the other temporary help,
Dorian had no trouble at all in orienting himself in the castle. He'd
memorised a floor plan of the place beforehand.

No, he said to himself again, he was not shallow enough to desire Klaus
von dem Eberbach merely for his body, as lovely as that was. Even
though it was one of the most desirable bodies he'd ever set eyes on…
He sometimes had trouble preventing himself from simply jumping the man
and dragging his clothes off in order to look at him, touch him, lick
him all over… He'd tried a couple of times, but with complete and
lamentable lack of success so far, especially as regarded the licking
part. The man defended his virtue more priggishly than any girl, and
with far more radical methods. It was awfully frustrating.

It was undeniable that Dorian was badly in lust, but it was more than
that. Sometimes, most often when the Major thought no one was paying
attention, when he wasn't paying attention himself, there was a spark
of something in those usually so steely green eyes that tore at Dorian
and made him hope and long with renewed fervour… Dorian knew how
ridiculous it would seem to most people to think of Klaus, the human
tank, in those terms, but he knew his man. His Major was lonely,
unhappy, helpless and in dire need of love.

Dorian knew that he could soothe his Major's loneliness. He could make
him happy and content - he could supply everything the other man lacked
in his life. All that he wanted in return was to be able to partake of
the man's beauty in every way imaginable, a far more than reasonable
exchange considering that he meant to make quite sure that the Major
would enjoy every second. If only that stubborn SOB would open his
amazingly lovely eyes and really *look* at Dorian and see what he had
to offer!

In the beginning, Dorian had been confident that it would not be long
before the Major gave in to his advances. After all, nobody resisted
Dorian - he'd set his sights on men proclaiming they were straight
before, and he hadn't paid their assertions the slightest mind. They'd
ended up in his bed in short order, and they'd been quite happy to be
there, too.

That had been before he'd truly gotten to know Iron Klaus, who had
shown appalling stalwartness in continuing not to fall into Dorian's
eager arms. He seemed to possess no sex drive of any kind.

The shocking notion made Dorian shudder inwardly. What a terrible
thought. What a horrible waste!

He kept an eye out for his love as he made his way through the large
room, filled with formally and expensively dressed people glittering
with jewels. Several pieces caught his professional interest as he
passed in his task to offer champagne to the wedding guests, but none
was so spectacular that it distracted him from his primary goal. "The
Man in Purple" was too important to risk over that portly dowager's
diamond-and-pearl choker or the bride's rather pretty set of emeralds.

Although… Dorian took a surreptitious closer look at the emerald
earrings and was impressed. Very large and clear stones in an unusually
intensive grass-green colour. Well-cut, too. Maybe some other time.

"Klaus!" the bride said loudly, directly into Dorian's ear. Dorian
almost dropped his tray; he'd only just recovered when the man who had
just entered the room turned, his chin coming up and setting into
granite hardness.

The Major made his way through the milling people, ploughing ahead with
an only passing attempt to pretend to social graces. He was wearing a
tuxedo and looked…

Dear heavens.

The champagne almost slipped from Dorian's grasp again as he turned
away hastily to stare at someone - anyone - else. If he looked at the
Major for just one moment longer, he would be forced to ravish him in
front of everyone, and then the love of his life would no doubt be very
angry with him. Oh *God*. Who'd have thought that it was possible for
the man to turn up the sex appeal to this degree - and without even
undressing?

"Thank you, Klaus. I am sure to be very happy with Anton - he is a
wonderful man. I don't think we would have suited very well, do you?"

What!

"You are too good for me," Klaus said, spoiling the amazingly gallant
phrase by the flat tone in which he delivered it. "Anton is a lucky
man. I wish you well."

Goodness. He was really making a major effort here, wasn't he?

"That is a lovely dress. You look very pretty."

Dorian hardly knew what to think. He recollected himself far enough to
lift his tray a bit higher, offering it to several guests, and gathered
up a number of empty glasses before shooting a glance at Anna out of
the corners of his eyes. She was smiling and didn't look particularly
stunned at the Major's unprecedented effort at polite gallantries.

"Excuse me."

Ah.

Dorian couldn't suppress a smirk at the hardly noticeable shadow of a
taken-aback look that appeared in Anna's face briefly before it was
smoothed over with the easy practice of the well-brought up. His love
had turned on his heel and was stalking away without a second glance.
The Major had only been trying to pack all of the necessary small talk
into as little time as possible.

"Oh, rrrrr," a low female voice commented behind him.

"Yes, I agree," Anna responded in a normal speaking tone. "But that
fact won't do anyone any good, I'm afraid. I should have been quicker
to introduce you - still, you should steer clear, anyway. You'll only
catch frostbite."

The completely irrational impulse to throttle the bitch who dared to
lust after *his* Major caught Dorian by surprise and he hurried to
distance himself from the newly married woman and her friend. That he
found himself slowly, but surely drifting in the direction the Major
had taken was pure coincidence. Truly.

His tray was almost entirely filled with empty glasses by the time he
finally caught up with his chain-smoking love where he had been
cornered by an elderly man with a shock of grey hair and a monotonous
laugh that reminded Dorian strangely of camels, even though he was
certain he had never heard a camel make any sound even remotely similar.

Without looking in his direction, the Major reached out and snagged one
of the remaining full glasses, draining it in one gulp and exchanging
it for a fresh one immediately. Dorian hovered a little - just in case
another new glass would be required. And because from where he stood,
he could see the soft fuzz at the back of his love's neck where he'd
swept back his long hair a moment ago.

He fled then, before he could succumb to the all but overwhelming need
to bite Major Klaus von dem Eberbach in the side of the neck and bury
his nose in the enchanting fuzz.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Mercifully, the soup, salad and dessert options were arranged along the
side of the dining hall on long buffets, but that still left the main
courses and, of course, the drinks to be attended to - and refilling
the buffet. And clearing away the used dishes and glasses, and bringing
fresh ones…

By the time the last members of the wedding party had eaten their fill,
the ones that had finished first had begun to drift back for one more
little bowl of the soup, one more slice of this cake or that pie, or
maybe just a spoon full of that chocolate mousse - waiter! Are you
telling me there are no cocktail tomatoes left? And where is the wine I
ordered ten minutes ago!

If the thieving line should ever become unfeasible for one reason or
another, one profession that Dorian would not be tempted to adopt was
that of waiter.

When the rushing back and forth had finally abated to the point where
he would not immediately be missed, Dorian sneaked off to the gallery
to take another long and covetous look at the painting that would soon
be hanging in his bedchamber back in London. He was still undecided
whether it would look better above the open fireplace or between the
windows on the east wall, and he surely deserved a little indulgence
after the ordeal he'd just gone through.

Dorian almost wished he'd lived when Tyrian had, despite the deplorable
state of plumbing and the lack of other essential comforts. There were
so many legends about the man - he'd been a rogue, a tyrant - wild,
vindictive, power- and pleasure-seeking, impulse-driven, charismatic
and completely without scruples or limits. Utterly fascinating. Not a
pleasant character to know, perhaps, but irresistible when regarded
from the safety of later centuries. And really, Dorian couldn't help
but think he'd have gotten along famously with the man.

*Stupid,* he chided himself laughingly. *Always playing with fire,
never learning from getting burned.* And Tyrian would surely have
burned him, as he'd burned everyone who'd come too close or even just
drawn his attention in his time… But Dorian had never been able to
resist that kind of ruthless, reckless, devil-may-care gleam in
someone's eyes - provided, of course, that they were set in an
attractive face. And the painter had captured that look perfectly, the
look Dorian had also seen on the face of -

Oh, blast it.

He'd been too absorbed in his thoughts to take a careful look at the
room he was entering before slipping inside. Basic caution, a voice
inside his head mocked - a voice bearing an irritating similarity to
that of the Major when he was being his most coldly disdainful.

For a long, frozen moment, Dorian thought he'd blown his cover. Then,
the sharp suspicion in Klaus' expression faded, leaving him looking
almost indifferent, and his head and shoulders disappeared back behind
the column from which they'd so suddenly sprung forth. A small cloud of
cigarette smoke emerged in his stead, marking his presence.

This was not a fitting moment to stare covetously at "The Man in
Purple". Neither was this a fitting moment to stare covetously at the
man in purple's descendant. Still… what painting was he looking at? If
it was a particularly valuable work - or even if it was just a
particular favourite of the Major's - then Dorian might as well pack
that one up, as well, while he was at it.

Hmm… a fairly recent work, if Dorian was any judge - which, of course,
he was. A woman in a scarlet riding outfit with silver trimming, a
small pillbox hat with a perky scarlet feather attached perching on an
artistically coiled crown of mahogany braids. The horse occupying most
of the background to the right was a gigantic, coal-black brute with
wild eyes and blood-red nostrils. To the left, a stretch of countryside
could be seen, complete with castle Eberbach in the distance.

The quality of the painting itself was average to moderately good. The
woman was lovely in an austere kind of way, but wore a strange and
somewhat unpleasant expression that seemed to be composed in equal
parts of boredom, hauteur, frustration and sadness. Unless the painter
had been worse than Dorian thought, the woman must have been rather
difficult.

Dorian risked a peek at the Major and was relieved to find that the man
wasn't looking at him. He had resumed his strangely disinterested
gazing at the painting and leaned back against the pillar he'd been
lurking behind, legs crossed at the ankles and looking as indolent as
he ever did with his cigarette held loosely in one hand.

"Who is the lady?" he asked in his most careful German, more because he
was truly curious than because he thought he'd actually get an answer.

"Your mother?" It slipped out before he could stop himself and he
winced a little, certain that now the expected fiery rebuke would come.

"Yes," Dorian's one true love said calmly, not looking at him. "My
mother."

They stared at the painting together for a while. The only thing Dorian
knew about the Major's mother was that she had died when Klaus had been
very young. Seeing this picture, though, he couldn't imagine that she
had been an easy woman to live with. None of the Eberbachs seemed to be
simple and uncomplicated. None of them seemed to know how to enjoy
themselves, either.

Well, some of them would just have to learn.

Dorian tried to find some resemblance to her son in Claudia Henriette's
features, but found none. Not entirely surprising, really, since he was
such a ringer for his ancestor in the paternal line.

"So," the Major said after an indefinite amount of time had passed in
silence. "Are you after the family silver or do you have a more
ambitious target?"

"What!" Dorian burst out in heated indignation. "I came up here because
a lady asked me to see if you were feeling ill and you accuse me of
being a thief! All I'm trying to do is my job!"

The Major straightened away from the pillar at last, turning to glare
at Dorian in pale imitation of his usual glower. "Oh? What did this
lady look like?"

Dorian described the bride's friend, but that did not seem to ease the
suspicion in his love's emerald eyes. Evidently he was not being
believed, in spite of his skill at fabricating from whole cloth.

Still, there was also that almost worrying passivity that amounted
almost to lack of interest. Under normal circumstances, Dorian would
already have found himself tossed into a dark cellar somewhere with
only a couple of king-sized bruises to keep him company.

"Come with me," the Major said at last, stubbing out his cigarette in
an ashtray perching on the window sill next to him before brushing past
Dorian to head for the door. Apparently, there was no doubt in his mind
that his order would be obeyed. For some reason, Dorian had been
classed so firmly in the "bothersome but harmless petty criminal"
department that he didn't even hesitate to turn his back on him.

Tuxedos were all well and good, and it was beyond doubt that Klaus
attired in one was the stuff of wet dreams and would haunt Dorian's
nights for countless months to come, but the things did have one very
important drawback - they concealed a very appealing part of male
anatomy that Dorian knew for a fact was well worth looking at in the
case of this particular specimen.

They reached the door and Dorian looked up from his regretful partial
inspection of his Major's legs and well-covered buttocks to meet cold,
narrowed eyes that were suddenly staring at him with an
all-too-familiar expression of appalled disbelief.

The Major drew in a deep breath and expelled it again slowly, creating
a vaguely threatening sound halfway between a hiss and a huff, but he
said nothing. He made Dorian go first when they went down the stairs,
though.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When they reached the bottom of the servants' stairwell, Klaus was
still debating the question of whether to simply kick the foiled thief
out with a warning not to show his face around here in the future or
whether to go to the hassle of calling the police. With a small shove
at the shoulder of the felon, he directed him to the right, towards the
kitchen.

He really should call the police, he told himself. There was every
possibility that the man had already squirreled some things away -
jewellery he'd stolen off the guests or assorted knickknacks he'd found
lying around… who knew. Searching him would do no good. He would have
stashed them somewhere on the premises, somewhere he or an accomplice
would be able to retrieve them later.

Damn irritating thieves - always popping up to make an already bad
situation worse, always complicating everything, always staring at him
as though he were on the menu and they were starving…

Why did this always happen to him? What the hell was it about him that
attracted this kind of twisted desire from men like -

Wait a minute.

This thief had crept into the gallery where, among many other valuable
pictures, that useless and bothersome "The Man in Purple" hung. He had
asked prying personal questions and had tried to brazen it out when
confronted with his larcenous intentions. He had been unabashedly
staring at Klaus' ass.

The face seemed broader, the features heavier, but that could be
padding and skillful makeup. The short dark hair was obviously a very
superior wig. The dark eyes must be tinted by contact lenses while the
skin had been darkened several shades by make-up, or perhaps through
careful tanning. The figure was correct - tall, slim, lithe and
moderately muscular. He hadn't even attempted to pad his waist. Vanity,
Klaus supposed. And the accent, although it might conceivably have
passed as an Italian one, really sounded more like an English one
attempting to pass as an Italian one…

"Eroica," Klaus said flatly. In front of him, the step of the Earl in
disguise faltered briefly before he half turned, raising his false dark
eyebrows in feigned innocence.

"What did you say?"

"I said Eroica, you bloody nuisance," Klaus snarled in English. A
strange feeling unfurled in his chest and he realised that he was
actually glad at this chance of clean anger. "What the hell are you
doing here?"

"I wanted to see you," the infamous thief tried hopefully, a
flirtatious smile appearing as if conjured forth.

"Riight. And you wanted to see some of my movable possessions, too, you
damned -"

And then he lost his train of thought in mid-rant, just as he was
gearing up to come out with some truly virulent insults that would wipe
that artificial simper right off the thieving, conniving little
pervert's face. Every one of the already assembling curses fell right
out of his head, blanked out by the icy wash of shock that slammed into
him at the sight of the man walking out of the library across the hall.

Lord Gloria was saying something, but Klaus shoved him aside roughly
and set out across the hall, the expanse of polished wood suddenly
blurring and looming strangely. There was a rushing in his ears that
almost obscured his voice when he spoke again, making his own words
sound impossibly distant and unfamiliar.

"You. Get out."

He'd become an old man since Klaus had seen him last. He was sturdier,
though nowhere near fat, and his posture had lost part of the athletic
vigour he'd always been so proud of. The lines in his face had been
there before, but had buried far more deeply into his skin; the
hairline had retreated. Klaus, who hadn't seen him for over ten years,
found himself stupidly surprised at the fact he'd been touched and
changed by something as banal as time.

He was smaller than Klaus, and somehow, this was by far the most
surprising thing about the encounter.

"Get the hell out of this house. Get the hell off this property. Don't
*ever* come back."

His godfather looked dismayed and held out a conciliatory hand. Klaus
knocked it aside and realised that he was shaking with rage, or shock,
or something else.

"Klaus, please. I came because I had hoped that now that we were both
rational adults, we could finally bury this ridiculous ill feeling you
have been nursing -"

"*GET OUT!*" He was shouting. Hadn't he been determined not to shout?

Robert Tobias retreated a quick, nervous step and turned hastily,
addressing Klaus' father, who now stepped out of the room behind him, a
thunderous expression drawing his brows together. "I told you he
wouldn't want to listen to reason, Theo. He hasn't changed at all."

"Klaus!"

He saw his own hand shoot out and connect with the older man's jaw. He
even felt the impact. It did not feel as though cause or effect were
directly connected to him, though.

That bastard Tobias fell back hard against the wall, stumbled and
almost sagged to the floor. Klaus' father hurried to catch him and pull
him to his feet, his face a mask of shock and rage. "Klaus. You will
*immediately* apologise and -"

"I will do *no such thing.*"

And then he was stalking across the hall and both that bastard and his
father were retreating before him, and he was still shaking and shocked
and too numb to truly be aware of what the hell he was doing. He didn't
care, he didn't give a damn what his father was trying to say or why
his face was flushing that dangerous shade of blood-red, he didn't
care. All he cared about was getting that bastard out of here, out of
his sight, out of his life.

The door was open. Had he opened it or had it been the butler? It
didn't matter and he didn't waste time thinking about it. Tobias was
stumbling down the stairs, falling to his knees at the bottom. Where
was his father? But that didn't matter either, because now Tobias was
hurrying across the drive, limping a little as though he'd twisted his
ankle. Klaus hoped he had, Klaus hoped he'd broken it, broken his jaw
too, should have done that so long ago, should have killed the bastard
- killed him. For some reason he hadn't been able to do it, even though
he'd wanted to, wanted it with a deep and terrible yearning that had
never truly died, that still burned in him even now.

Tobias was shouting something, but Klaus couldn't hear. The man had
stopped moving. He was backed up against a car and not moving and Klaus
wondered why he lived still when all those years ago, Klaus had wanted
to kill him. Why hadn't he? Why didn't he?

And that was the moment that Klaus realised, with an exhilarating sense
of sudden, dizzying freedom, that there was still time. He hadn't been
able to do it then, but things had changed and there was still time. He
could do it now.

"Keys! I don't have the keys! I don't have my keys -"

*I can kill you. I hate you, and I can kill you because there is
nothing, nothing, absolutely *nothing* to hold me back.*

He never felt the sting of the dart in his back, and even the
blood-edged darkness reaching up to swallow him seemed strangely
expected, fusing without a break into the churning rage and hate and
the triumph of his own power and unconditional will to end this
particular life.

"If I ever see you again, I will kill you."

And he knew he'd spoken the words out loud before the blackness dragged
him down. He could tell by the expression in the bastard's eye. He was
telling the truth, and Tobias knew it.

As surely as if he had locked his hands around the man's head and
broken his neck, as surely as if he had choked out his life with his
breath or put a bullet between his eyes or driven his nasal bone into
his brain - Klaus had won.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Oh dear. This was not going at all according to plan. He should have
been out of the castle hours ago, proud possessor of "The Man in
Purple", poor substitute for the living, breathing version perhaps, but
nevertheless a possession Dorian had quite looked forward to. By this
time, he should have been out of the country, heading for home… leaving
his Major, though not for too long.

Instead, the catering van bearing his people had come and gone, leaving
Dorian still at the castle with both the picture and the Major. He'd
refused to listen to anything his men had said to him on the subject of
his decision to stay. He'd claimed he was only waiting for a better
opportunity to snatch the picture, but he didn't think Bonham had
believed him.

The truth was that he couldn't leave the Major now, not even having
witnessed that appalling outburst. The Major needed him. Dorian had
known this for some time, and this occurrence might conceivably be
turned into an opportunity to make that stubborn German realise it, as
well.

Dorian had never seen anyone go berserk before, and he'd found that it
was not at all a pleasant sight - not even in the wonderful Major,
whose outbursts of temper Dorian quite often enjoyed. His acquaintance
with the love of his life had taught Dorian appreciation of the brand
of aesthetic appeal held by the sheen of bright steel… The same appeal
held by the exhilarating mixture of danger, streamlined violence and
sheer physical beauty of the Major's blazing anger. He was at his most
superbly, ravishingly beddable when he was in a towering rage, and
usually Dorian never wanted to rip the man's clothes off more than when
he was shouting at the top of his voice.

So far, of course, Dorian had not actually revealed this to his
excitable love. He rather thought it would be wise to postpone that
revelation until he'd actually bedded the man several times and
mellowed him just a tad. Not too much. He didn't want him to change -
much. Just enough to get him to stop fighting Dorian - to get him into
Dorian's bed. No more.

This new and immoderate brand of rage the Major had flown into at the
sight of his father's friend had not been aesthetic or attractive at
all. Dorian had thought he'd seen the Major lose his temper before, but
quite evidently, he'd been wrong. The Major had been about to kill that
man with his bare hands. No one had come right out and said it, but
only the timely intervention of the elder Eberbach and the rifle his
gamekeeper used to sedate wildlife for veterinary treatment had saved
Mr. Tobias's life.

There would be hell to pay once the Major woke up. The elder Eberbach
seemed more than ready to commit murder himself, even if it did leave
him without an heir. Saying that Dorian's one true love had disrupted
the nuptial celebrations was like saying that a hand-grenade lobbed
into a hotel lobby had gotten the receptionist's attention.

It was fortunate that Dorian was here to take care of Klaus. He'd
quickly turned himself into a Venetian student of medicine about to
graduate and jobbing as a waiter to freshen up his finances before
embarking upon the last leg of his European tour. Everyone had been
thankful to get the Major off their hands at least for an hour or two.
They'd all gathered around the deathly pale and gasping Tobias and been
perfectly happy to leave the Major to Dorian once he'd been carried up
to his room and dropped on the bed.

If Dorian hadn't been so insistent, Eberbach senior would probably have
left his son to sleep it off right there in the driveway.

No one seemed quite certain when the anaesthetic would wear off; the
only certainty on the matter had been provided by the gamekeeper, who,
when rung from his sleep at Dorian's insistence, had divulged the
information that on a healthy young stag of average weight, one dart
would guarantee around a half hour of sleep.

The Major had been out like a light for almost three hours. Dorian was
beginning to worry. If he didn't show signs of beginning to wake up
soon, Dorian would insist that a real doctor be called in to take some
blood tests, or whatever it was doctors did under these circumstances.
The poor Major couldn't be over six times lighter than an average stag,
could he? He *had* turned out to be pretty heavy, after all…

Dorian had finally had the opportunity to undress his insensate love,
and he hadn't even been in the proper mood to take full advantage. He'd
pulled off his shoes, bow-tie and jacket and of course loosened his
shirt - he could hardly not do so in his role as nurse - but he'd been
too worried to enjoy it properly. It was not at all like his fantasy of
getting the man drunk and undressing him… This was simply too serious.
And of course the Major could wake up at any moment, and depending on
what exactly Dorian was doing at that moment, might go straight into
another one *those*rages.

All the same, Dorian hadn't been able to stop himself from stroking the
smooth chest revealed beneath the unbuttoned shirt. In truth, he hadn't
tried very hard. He had to calm himself down somehow, after all. And he
couldn't help being interested in the fact that Klaus truly did have
the most lovely legs - swimmer's legs, matching his slim hips and broad
shoulders. No one could blame Dorian for running a more or less casual
hand over his true love's legs. The Major was still wearing his tuxedo
pants, after all. And it seemed as though he were wearing very thick
flannel underwear besides. About six layers, by the feel of it. It was
most frustrating.

"This would be more fun if you were awake and co-operating," Dorian
sighed, combing a slow hand through his love's sleek dark hair. It was
softer than he'd thought it would be - as fine as silk, naturally
glossy. Just as beautiful as the rest of him.

Why did he have to have such a violent streak? It was quite daunting,
really… The thought of someday provoking the Major once too often and
making him fly into such a maniacal, mindlessly murderous frenzy…

Dorian shuddered and clenched his hand in his love's long hair. Damn
the man. Couldn't he at least have the decency to be ugly?

"What did that geezer do to make you so angry?" he wondered, his roving
hand gliding down to the exposed collarbone, stroking lightly. Not that
it was all that difficult to make the Major throw a tantrum, but this
had been something considerably beyond anything in the annals of
written history.

He checked his berserker's heartbeat, which seemed strong and regular
as far as he could tell. No chest hair, as he'd found… Perfectly formed
pectorals though, muscular but not too bulky. Washboard stomach, too,
just as he'd known... and oh, he felt so good, solid and warm and real
beneath Dorian's touch, at last, after so long…

*I refuse to molest a sedated man,* Dorian told himself. He'd been
trying to convince himself of this for the last three hours, and his
power of self-persuasion was waning fast. *I will not sink to molesting
a sedated man. No, not even if he won't notice. I'll be ethical and
heroically refuse… For the most part… Damn…*

There was nothing in the room to distract himself with - he'd hardly
ever been in even a hotel room with so little personal character. There
was not a single picture on the wall, and the only furnishings were the
bed, a closet, an empty desk and a chair, all seemingly chosen for
their utilitarian and impersonally boring qualities. If it hadn't been
for the interesting medieval-style window nooks, complete with built-in
benches, it would have been quite the most horrible room Dorian had
ever voluntarily spent time in. It ranked only slightly ahead of that
unmentionable bed-and-breakfast near Dover where he'd once been forced
to lie low for three days. Ever since those torture-filled days, Dorian
had had a pathological dislike of pink-and-orange flowered wallpaper in
combination with green upholstery.

The Major made a strange sound in his sleep - at least Dorian hoped it
was in his sleep - and the thief hastily removed his hand from his one
true love's belt buckle. Talk about bad timing! Was he going to wake up
just when Dorian had finally defeated his conscience?

"Major?"

The regular breathing of the unconscious man hitched and became ragged;
the still body lost its relaxed sprawl as consciousness returned,
somehow exchanging loose-limbed relaxation for tension even before
co-ordinated movement became possible again.

Dorian suppressed a sigh. His poor love… Look at that, even asleep he
was all uptight and on edge. No wonder he went crazy from time to time.
They would have to find some more pleasant outlet for all of that
accumulated tension…

"Klaus," he whispered next to the Major's ear, his breath stirring the
silky short hairs at the hairline. "Wake up, darling."

Awareness hit the Major's body with the impact of a bullet. Every
muscle tensed at the same time, still tension turning into barely
restrained violence screaming to be unleashed. Klaus twisted out from
beneath Dorian's hands and was suddenly crouching on the other side of
the bed.

Wild and dazed green eyes met Dorian's and with considerable disbelief,
Dorian read an emotion there that he had never thought he would ever
see in the Major. Panic.

It took almost the space of two breaths for recognition to rise in his
love's eyes. The panic seeped out of his expression to be replaced by
the more familiar piercing alertness, but he did not straighten from
his defensive crouch.

"Dorian."

Dorian's breath caught. The Major had never called him by his first
name before - he'd called him Eroica or Lord Gloria, but never Dorian.
He didn't seem aware of what he'd said, and Dorian didn't want to react
too overtly in case he'd say it again.

"Yes," he whispered.

"Is he still here?"

"I don't know," Dorian whispered, pausing to clear his throat and speak
on in a more normal voice. "I think he wanted to leave, but he was -
very shaken. Your father sat him down to get some brandy into him and
calm him down."

The Major's mouth thinned into a harsh line, nostrils flaring. After a
moment, he straightened and stood next to the bed in indecision,
looking towards the door. The look in his narrowed eyes was nowhere
near the wildness of several hours before, but even so Dorian found
this level of hate disturbing.

"He had better not be there when I go downstairs," the Major said
quietly. Dorian didn't think he was talking to him.

"Is he a spy?" Dorian ventured, putting forward the only theory he had
been able to come up with.

Klaus laughed harshly. "Not to my knowledge. Not that I'd put anything
past him." As an afterthought, he added, "Like some other people I
could mention." He wasn't even looking at Dorian when he said it,
though, and his voice was completely empty of the customary anger and
disgust.

"Then what did he do?"

Completely ignoring the question, the Major stretched and winced,
putting a hand to his back where the dart had gone in to feel the small
spot of dried blood. "Don't tell me. My father shot me with the
gamekeeper's rifle."

Dorian nodded slowly. He wondered whether this had happened before, but
wasn't really sure he wanted to know the answer. Earlier, he'd wondered
whether Eberbach senior would have shot his son with a regular rifle if
he hadn't had this one at hand, and he'd decided that he wanted that
answer even less.

"How long was I out?"

"Just about three hours."

The Major nodded and looked back towards the door. After a long moment,
he turned away and walked to the window instead, leaning heavily on the
sill with both hands. The elaborate formal gardens behind the castle
had been illuminated with artfully placed torches, and Klaus looked out
at the nocturnal landscape in silence, unmoving.

No one had ever accused Dorian of being overly patient. Curiosity, now…
That he had in spades.

"What happens now?"

The answer was a long time coming. Dorian had already given up on
receiving an answer when his love turned a little and leaned the side
of his head against the windowpane. He probably had a headache. "I
don't know," he said. "Why are you still here? Go away. I don't need
the hassle of locking up a thief, as well."

"I'll have you know that I am a law-abiding student of medicine from
Venice."

The Major snorted half-heartedly. "Medicine?"

"And it was a good thing that I was here and could be put in charge of
you until you woke up again."

Klaus whipped around, catching Dorian entirely by surprise with the
sudden violence of the motion. A touch of the wild panic was back in
his eyes and Dorian could only stare in astonishment. It faded away
almost immediately, but it had been there; Dorian had seen it, an
entirely new expression that he had now seen twice in quick succession
without being able to explain it in either case.

The two stared at each other for a while.

"Tell me something," the Major requested brusquely. "I want you to take
time and think the question over seriously, and I want a truthful
answer for once. Do you think that would be possible?"

Dorian blinked. "I - of course, Major, for you, anything."

The expected disgusted snort lacked spirit. "Just tell me why. What is
it that you think you see in me that makes you act like this? What the
hell have I ever done to encourage you or give you reason to believe I
- what is it! Tell me what the hell it is!"

"I just love you, Major. There doesn't always have to be a reason that
can be expressed in simple concepts and mere words. One day you'll
realise -"

"What the hell kind of answer is that? Of course there is a reason! I
asked you to think it over, you idiot, so think it over, damn you! I
want a real answer!"

Stunned at the sudden vehemence, Dorian retreated half a step. "I -
well, the obvious answer is that you're very beautiful, Major."

He calmed down at once, apparently acknowledging this as an acceptable
response. His eyes narrowed and Dorian could almost see the wheels
whirring away in his head. "So how do I become less *beautiful* to men
like you? Cut off the hair? Grow a beard? Wear thick-lensed glasses and
speak in dialect? *What?*"

There was something in the disgust in his Major's voice that made
Dorian very uneasy. He spat out *beautiful* as though the word tasted
bad in his mouth.

"I don't think it's possible for you to stop being beautiful," Dorian
said simply. "It's not a bad thing. You should be -"

"Oh yes - I should be so thankful to be molested by perverts! What
great good fortune to be born with a face that attracts warped
degenerates like - you. I think I'll get an operation and be rid of
this problem once and for all."

Dorian didn't know what to say to that, so he remained silent. His love
was clearly agitated and paced back and forth through the room,
stopping at last directly in front of Dorian, so close that he imagined
he could smell him… feel the heat of his anger and frustration coming
off him, the ineffable quality of Klaus that made him so mysteriously
irresistible.

Amazing. Even frustration was sexy on the man.

"Do you never stop to think at all? This is so futile! You waste a
ridiculous amount of energy and effort on an endeavour that is doomed
to failure. *Why?* I don't understand you! Even assuming that you'd
chosen someone - like you - someone who might eventually give in, it
wouldn't be worth all of the trouble. Why are you behaving like an
idiot? Why the hell don't you think it through and accept the
undeniable facts of the -"

"Don't be silly. Having you in my bed will be well worth all of the
trouble," Dorian said, not thinking at all. An instant later, he almost
bit his tongue as he snapped his mouth shut too quickly, wishing he
could bite the words back before they reached the Major's ear.

Dorian never could seem to remember that it was not a good idea to be
too direct around his irascible love - talking of his love for the
other man was bad, but talking of lust inevitably led to a major
blow-up. Klaus was so volatile and, as Dorian had discovered early on
in his campaign to win him, such a terrible prude.

Klaus was looking at him, eyes cold, but seeming almost distracted,
lips compressed into a harsh line that completely obscured the
sensually swung line of his mouth. Dorian couldn't quite decide whether
his darling seemed more likely to hit him first and start shouting
later or the other way around.

But, now that he thought about it, it was taking him unusually long to
start with whatever it was he was going to do first…

Someone else might not have considered this an opening, but Dorian had
been chasing his Major for years, subsisting on barely existing,
perhaps mostly imagined hints of encouragement and a hope of success
that was essentially based on pure self-confidence. Seen in this light,
the uncharacteristic lack of violent denial was almost an encouragement.

Dorian launched himself at the Major without further contemplation,
wrapping both arms around his neck and plastering himself to his front.
Klaus started back violently, but only succeeded in hitting the side of
the bed with the backs of his knees, neatly felling himself and ending
up pinned to his bed by Dorian's body.

The Major's mouth was open, sucking in air in preparation for a
deafening bellow. Dorian clung tighter and covered the other man's
mouth with his own, not wasting any time. He knew he wouldn't have
long, and he had to make the most of every instant.

Klaus' lips were soft and warm beneath Dorian's; delving as deeply into
his love's mouth as he could, Dorian was almost dizzy with the joy of
this unprecedented, stolen intimacy. The Major tasted very faintly of
cigarettes, but mostly of himself, and unlike what Dorian would have
expected if he'd stopped to think, he didn't bite. He didn't bite even
when Dorian risked a split-second separation of their mouths only to
dive back in at a better angle, stroking and teasing with every
particle of his considerable skill. Klaus didn't respond, either, but
that didn't perturb Dorian in the slightest. One day he would - one day
soon, very soon now…

"I love you," he whispered fervently when he drew back at last,
nuzzling his face into his true love's neck and the silky hair spread
out beside it on the pillow like a raven's wing. "You're so wonderful."

The body beneath him shuddered and tensed, every muscle going
rock-hard. Dorian could feel the chest expand against his, hands coming
up in a bruising grip at his shoulders. His time was short. Klaus was
trying to shift, evidently attempting to brace himself against the
mattress and throw Dorian off, but he moved awkwardly, almost
hesitantly… completely without his usual prowling, predatory grace.

The way he moved was one of the first things Dorian had noticed about
him, even before he'd realised how magnificent a creature the man was
as a whole. He could be terribly stiff, prudish and uptight, but he
moved as though he had no bones at all. He flowed. He *stalked*. Like a
panther, green-eyed and sleek - lovely, lethal, all controlled grace
and contained violence… the beauty of razor-sharp fangs and honed steel.

Dorian didn't know quite when he'd become erect, but now he was
achingly hard and throbbing and couldn't think past the raging desire
for the incredible creature beneath him. His Major was shifting
position and Dorian took advantage of the slightly opened thighs,
wriggling forcefully and wedging himself between his love's legs.

The skin beneath his lips and teeth smelled and tasted of Klaus. Dorian
bit down hard, grinding his erection against the other man's groin. If
he hadn't been completely beyond rational thought, he would very
probably have chosen to proceed somewhat less aggressively, but how
could he hold back now that he finally tasted and touched and felt his
love like this, now that his love's body was spread below him like a
feast, very tense and again very still and not resisting, not fighting
Dorian's touch…

Hands were still locked on his shoulders with painful force, but they
didn't push him away. It was left to Dorian himself to pull back in
order to tear at the Major's dress shirt frantically, ripping the front
open all the way to the waistband of the pants.

Klaus made a small sound, a strange sound - not anger, not desire, not
quite distress. Entirely captivating.

"It's all right love, it's all right, I'll show you - oh God, just let
me show you -"

He'd closed his eyes and turned his face sideways into the pillow. His
jaw was now clenched tightly shut, the perfectly sculpted mouth set
into a thin line. He looked almost as though he were in pain.

It would have been a lie to say Dorian understood what was happening
here, but he could not possibly have cared less. He understood enough -
he saw that his elusive Major was at last within his grasp, and that
was the only thing that mattered. Somehow, he had finally found the
right moment, the right method, the right everything.

*Oh yes, yes, don't let him change his mind now, let this last just ten
more minutes, half an hour, a lifetime…*

The cotton undershirt was warm with his Major's body heat and suffused
with the subtle scent of his skin. Dorian licked and bit at the fabric
covering one nipple while his hands tugged the shirt out of the pants
and dove beneath, pushing it upwards. So warm, so solid, silken skin
over sculpted muscle. Intoxicating. Irresistible.

And then the belt-buckle finally succumbed to his shaking, but deft
fingers, and his hand slid beneath another layer of cotton into greater
warmth, finding surprisingly soft curls and an only very slightly
filled penis.

"Love you," he whispered again, unable and unwilling to hold back the
words when the emotion was surging so wildly within him, tangled up
with awe at the man's perfection and the fire-bright and still-rising
rage of lust.

He curled his fingers gently around the Major and assayed an
experimental caress. Klaus' body was so tense that Dorian fleetingly
worried he'd develop a muscle cramp, but his cock was responding to
Dorian's skilled caresses, slowly perhaps, but undeniably. Some part of
Dorian wished he could undress his love fully and do this properly -
slowly and exhaustively explore every delectable inch of Klaus' body -
but that would have to wait because he wasn't about to let go now, not
on any account, not for the entire contents of the Louvre.

The Major gasped in a desperate lungful of breath and let out a very
quiet sound halfway between a growl and a sob.

Oh this was all so sudden and strange and it did not really feel like
the surrender he'd envisioned, but Dorian wasn't about to waste
precious time on thinking. Stubborn prudish pig-headed Klaus, making
everything that should have been simple and natural so terribly
difficult, always trying to turn everything into a joyless chore… But
he'd teach him to let go and simply enjoy eventually, it would just
take a little time. This was still Iron Klaus after all, he was still
resisting his own sexuality and human needs but Dorian would teach him
that there was more to life than cold duty and hard, joyless discipline…

*I have wanted you, wanted this, ever since I first looked at you
properly, my love -* and he would have said it aloud but he couldn't
speak with his lips and tongue caressing what was now a sizeable
erection. He'd done this so often, but it had never been quite like
this, it had never been as though the pleasure of the man beneath him
was all one with his own pleasure, just as though there were no
difference between the two at all.

Klaus made no sound at all as he came, and of everything that had
happened, this surprised Dorian the least. There would be a time when
he would scream Dorian's name, Dorian promised himself, even though he
couldn't really imagine it. Still, he didn't doubt that he'd get him
there eventually. Didn't he always get what he wanted?

He smiled and gently bit the inside of his lover's thigh before looking
up again.

"You are so incredibly beautiful." Dorian's voice was dark and rough
with lust and a muscle in the Major's jaw jumped visibly at the sound.
He did not move as Dorian licked and nipped and bit his way up the
lovely body, up to the collarbone and neck and ear.

Orgasm had relaxed Klaus fractionally, but the sound of Dorian's zipper
made him tense right up again.

"Please," Dorian whispered into his love's ear. "Touch me."

The response was a long time in coming and he reflected fleetingly that
he should probably have left this demand for some other time. It was a
moot point, though - rational considerations had played no part in any
of his actions since the moment his body had hit the bed on top of
Klaus.

The case could also have been made that the moment in question lay much
farther back, at some point during the second time he'd seen the man,
the first time he'd felt the stunning allure of his particular, unique
brand of loveliness, all those bleak, yearning months and years ago…

"Of course you can." Dorian was glad this would be the last time he'd
have to seduce a nervous and uptight virgin to his bed. All he wanted
was to pounce on the Major, who was more than any man could be expected
to resist - priggish and incongruously dissipated all at once with the
rucked-up undershirt tucked just above his nipples and the tuxedo pants
and no-nonsense white boxers tangled about his thighs…

It took a long moment, but at last Klaus took a deep breath, finally
unclenched his hands from Dorian's shoulders, and managed to square his
own shoulders in sombre determination even though he was lying down in
the tattered remains of formal wardrobe. His head turned smartly to the
front and his eyes snapped open, focusing on Dorian, bright
silver-green and unreadable as ever.

Aristocratic nostrils flared. "Very well." He sounded like someone
about to jump out of the trenches for a desperate dash to reach enemy
territory without being gunned down.

He kept his eyes open now, fixed on Dorian's face with peculiar and
unswerving concentration. Dorian moved back a little, straddling his
love's waist and bending down to brush a light kiss onto the set mouth.
The hand at the back of his head caught him by surprise and he almost
lost his balance as Klaus pulled him in for a deeper kiss, his mouth
opening to welcome Dorian's in active co-operation this time. He kissed
somewhat hesitantly - still not certain that he really wanted to be
doing this.

Neither the hesitation nor the determined, almost cool competence of
the kiss bothered Dorian. It was more initiative than he'd expected
after Klaus' earlier imitation of a stone, and more than enough to make
him gasp and tremble in sheer animal lust. Klaus had been able to burn
him with a derisive glance; *this*… this was almost pain.

The Major didn't attempt to undress Dorian further. He slid one hand
around his side to his still-clad buttocks, where it rested lightly.
The other one started at his face, touching his cheek shyly, brushing
over his lips and tugging off the wig to comb through Dorian's hair
when it tumbled free, tugging at the long curls.

Dorian leaned into the caress mindlessly, trying not to forget to
breathe. The unexpected gentleness was turning him on terribly and he
would probably explode the moment Klaus touched him.

Klaus stroked down the side of his neck and Dorian heard himself making
the most extraordinary moaning and gasping sounds. The touch firmed
over his shirt-clad chest and did not hesitate at all when it slid onto
bare skin again, closing around Dorian's erection lightly, but firmly.
Dorian whimpered and bucked as fingertips pressed just beneath the
head, cried out softly at the first strong stroke, and came with a
strangled moan before Klaus could ever establish any kind of rhythm.

"Klaus," he whispered, crawling up the still body to snuggle against
his chest. "Hmm… You most certainly can. That was wonderful. *You* are
wonderful."

The Major closed his eyes again and swallowed, his deep breaths coming
in calculated evenness. Almost immediately, he extricated himself from
Dorian's clinging embrace and rolled to his feet smoothly, pulling up
his trousers and straightening up the rest of his attire as well as he
could. He didn't look at Dorian.

"This did not happen."

"Whatever you say, darling," Dorian purred. The stab of disappointed
anger that flashed through him at his love's coldness was a bigger
surprise than the coldness itself - he automatically fell back on one
of his more overt 'screaming queen' voices and felt a certain amount of
satisfaction at Klaus' instant and predictable reaction. "You know, I
happen to have stumbled across a rather charming little gourmet
restaurant not very far from here - Zur Alten Muehle, I believe. Let's
have dinner tomorrow and see what else won't happen."

"GET OUT!"

It was a good imitation of his Major's usual rage, but not good enough
to fool Dorian, who considered himself the greatest living expert on
his love's tempestuous outbreaks of temper. There was something lacking
in the tone - the volume was there, but the emotion was wrong somehow,
and Klaus still wasn't looking at him. Dorian couldn't understand it,
but he was beginning to grow slightly uneasy.

"Major, is anything wrong?" When you got right down to it, none of this
made any sense… Not even his almost detached behaviour when he'd caught
Dorian in the gallery had been characteristic, and it had gone farther
and farther off track with his unprovoked attack on the old man in the
hall, his strange passive willingness to be seduced, then even his
active participation - and now this lacklustre temper…

Klaus whirled and glared at Dorian, tangled black hair falling into his
eyes. "IS ANYTHING WRONG??? Now what could possibly be WRONG? You're
here and he's here and my father is going to kill me and I've just let
you - I - and - even though I've finally won, even though he KNOWS I
have, it means NOTHING! And you haven't even told me *why*, you blasted
queer! There are plenty of men around who are more *beautiful* than me
and I know damned well that that isn't the real problem!"

Dorian had a hard time concentrating on the words. He'd always thought
that Klaus in one of his rages was the hottest thing since flame
throwers, but *now*, with the taste of him still in his mouth, the feel
of his skin still tingling on his fingers… God, *now*…

Perhaps the reason for Dorian's preoccupation showed in his face;
whatever the reason, something twisted in his Major's expression and he
went into full melt down. As always, he was sexy as hell with his green
eyes blazing like that… Still, maybe it would be not entirely unwise
for Dorian to remove himself from his one true love's immediate
proximity until the man had calmed down a bit.

Accordingly, he jumped up and sprinted for the door, successfully
eluding Klaus' grip with a quick twist and slamming the door behind
himself. He paused to zip up and then darted around the nearest bend in
the grey stone hall, pressing back into a window nook in case the Major
decided to brave the corridors in his dishevelled condition.

He did not, although a series of crashes announced that he was not yet
entirely back in control over himself. Someone pounded down the
corridor and stopped in front of his door. There was a noticeable pause
before the unidentified someone knocked, somewhat timidly.

Even muffled by ancient stone and thick wood, his love's bellow was
quite impressive. The answer of the timid knocker was not audible from
where Dorian hid, but even the slightly damped response of the Major
was still clear.

Really, Dorian reflected smugly, his command of the German language had
benefited greatly from his love for the Major - he did want to know
what his darling was saying when he was screaming at him, after all. So
far, his understanding of curses and insults had been exercised most
frequently, but he made a mental note to brush up on endearments and
love-talk. Couldn't be all that long anymore now, he reasoned.

"Incompetent idiot! Half an hour I said!" Mumbling from the shy one.
"Blast it!! Are you deaf? I said half an hour, so tell him half an
hour, you spineless excuse for a man!" More mumbling, desperation clear
in the tone. "Oh bloody damned well! Tell him to come up then.
Miserable coward!"

Oh, now Dorian couldn't possibly miss this… The Major was going to have
an interview with his father, who was probably the genetic source of
that fierce temper and who would want to cast light on his son's
peculiar outburst as much as Dorian did.

The muffled footsteps of the timid servant retreated and Dorian peeked
around the corner to make certain the coast was clear before creeping
back to his love's door. Low growling could be heard in the room
beyond; then, an inner door slammed.

Dorian cracked open the door, assured himself Klaus was really in the
bathroom, and slipped inside. After brief deliberation, he opted for
the clichéd, but nevertheless best place of concealment under the
circumstances - behind one of the very thick, dark red velvet curtains.
If he pulled it up in front of the window nook just a bit, he'd even
have a comfortable place to sit. Thank God for medieval window seats.

His love emerged from the bathroom wrapped head to toe in a bathrobe,
of course. Dorian suppressed a disappointed sigh as Klaus lit up a
cigarette, straightened up the bed with two efficient tugs and threw a
day cover over it, pausing and bending to look underneath after a
slight hesitation.

Dorian had briefly considered that hiding space and was beginning to
feel smug for his foresight in choosing a better one when his love
turned to face the window. Damn! Why hadn't Dorian thought of this? Of
course he'd want to air the room to make sure no tell-tale scent of sex
remained.

The door slammed open with enough force to rebound from the wall
shuddering and the elder Eberbach stormed in. Dorian retreated behind
the curtain as far as he could. Two of them in a small contained space…
they were lucky if this didn't result in the destruction of the castle.

"Explain yourself." Very cold, but with the threat of explosion lurking
just beneath the surface.

"I can't, sir."

Dorian winced. Oh, Major, not wise, not wise at all.

"You have no explanation or you will not give it?"

"I cannot give it."

"You have disrupted the festivities - cast a shadow over the marriage
of your cousin - attacked, injured and nearly frightened to death my
oldest friend and your own godfather - and you actually have the nerve
to STAND HERE AND TELL ME YOU WON'T CONDESCEND SO FAR AS TO GIVE ME
EVEN THE WEAKEST EXCUSE FOR YOUR INEXCUSABLE CONDUCT!"

There was no reaction at all and Dorian, who'd shrunk as far back
against the cool stone as he could, risked tugging the fabric shielding
him from sight back slightly to catch a glimpse of what was happening.
The Major had sunk to sit on the edge of the bed, face closed, staring
up at his father with no expression whatsoever on his face.

The elder Eberbach shuddered and stepped back, turning to pace back and
forth several times in exactly the same way his son did when he was
trying very hard not to hit someone. Klaus used the interval to inhale
the rest of his cigarette and half of a new one.

"Robert has always been a good friend to you, and he still is even now,
despite your unspeakable actions - he has not even attempted to put
blame on you, although he has no more of a clue where this ridiculous
grudge you have been holding for well-nigh fifteen years now originated
than I do. He told me that he was certain you thought you had good
reason. I can only say that this is a testament to his great
high-mindedness and inexplicable good will to you as the son of a good
friend!"

"I am sorry, sir, but I cannot discuss it with you," Klaus said in a
low, almost dead voice that Dorian didn't like at all. "However, my -
grudge - is not ridiculous. It is well-founded, and although I am aware
it may be difficult for you to believe this when I cannot elaborate
further, I am asking you to accept that I do have good reasons for my
actions. Sir, I regret putting you into such a position and apologise
for the disruption of the wedding celebration, but I am forced to ask
you to trust -"

"After the way you have behaved today? How can I ever trust you to
behave like a reasonable adult again after this! You were about to kill
my oldest friend, you refuse even to tell me why, not that any
explanation would be able to excuse such criminal conduct, and then you
ask me to trust you? You have certainly never lacked for bloody nerve!
I should have known to expect something like this after the way you
used to be as a boy - it's incomprehensible to me that I should have
such a son! All your life you have been -"

Klaus flung himself off the bed and stood nose to nose with his
red-faced father. "I *can't* tell you! I would if I could, but - sir,
just trust me for once - please!"

The last word sounded painful, as though it had not only been torn from
him, but had injured him on the way. Dorian felt a sharp burn of
resentment towards the older Eberbach. Couldn't he see what it had cost
his son to bend this far? For Klaus, this kind of behaviour amounted to
abject grovelling. What the hell did the old bastard expect, anyway -
didn't he know his son at all?

"Klaus. I am ordering you as your father and the head of the house.
Clear this up."

What dirty tactics! Dorian noticed that in his indignation at this
underhanded blackmailing strategy, he had clutched the heavy curtain so
tightly that he was about to bring it down. Hastily, he forced himself
to let go.

The pause was long and painful, but Dorian had no doubt of who the
victor of this bout would be. The elder Eberbach had played an
unbeatable trump card - grab Klaus by his sense of honour and duty and
you had him right where it hurt.

"I can't," the Major whispered at last. Dorian realised that he had
never before heard him sound defeated.

For a terrible moment of stunned shock, Dorian thought the incredulous
gasp had come from him; only when Eberbach senior added an inarticulate
sputtering did he realise who the true originator of the sound had been.

It seemed that this particular underhanded tactic had never before been
known to fail and now, Eberbach senior had no powder left to shoot with.

The silence that followed was now no longer painful, but terrible; the
air was charged with tension and anger and Dorian imagined he could
feel the building storm crackle in the room like electricity building
up for lightning. He wouldn't have been surprised to see his hair stand
on end from the charge.

The door slammed and heavy steps stomped off down the corridor. Inside
the room, the silence was complete.

Dorian held his breath for as long as he could for fear the sound of
his lungs working would give him away. When he could no longer manage,
he was certain the sound that was so loud in his ears would have Klaus
tearing aside the concealing curtain and beating him to kingdom come.

Nothing. The silence remained unbroken. There was not even the flick of
a lighter or the deep inhalation of someone taking a drag at a
cigarette.

Now he was beginning to worry, strange and improbable scenarios
flickering through his mind. What if Eberbach senior had had a knife
with him - what if Klaus was at this very moment bleeding out his life
not three meters away from Dorian? Of course it was ridiculous, the old
man wouldn't do that and no one died this silently, not even his stoic
Klaus, at least Dorian was *sure* that there would have to be some kind
of rasping or gasping or -

"Great high-mindedness!" Dorian was so relieved at this sign of life
from his Major that the terrible bitterness in the low growl didn't
register until the second fragment of conversation was replayed.
"Inexplicable good will!"

In any good movie, this would have been the moment that Klaus,
believing himself alone, would have relieved his heavy heart of the
mystery weighing on him by entrusting it to the walls of his childhood
domicile, thereby unintentionally filling in the good friend who
watched and listened in hiding, concerned for the handsome hero and
eager to earn his undying gratitude by taking care of whatever the
problem was.

Unfortunately, Klaus did not have the part of the handsome hero down
very well. After another endless moment of utter motionlessness, the
bed creaked and the robe rustled as he stood up. The Major himself made
no sound, but the closet creaked as well, and there was more rustling
as clothes were selected and pulled out. Dorian tried to resist for
only a second or two before risking discovery once again by twisting a
fold of fabric and peeking out.

Klaus, still swathed in over-sized bathrobe and carrying an armful of
formal tuxedo and starched white shirt, disappeared in the bathroom and
closed the door. Amazing. The man went to the bathroom to change even
in his own room.

Dorian waited around until his love emerged just to be certain he
wouldn't be missing out on anything if he left early. Yes, indeed...
The Major was buttoned up to the chin and only stopped to put on his
shoes and light another of his ever-present cigarettes before following
his father.

Well, he'd gotten the man into bed. It was only a matter of time before
he managed to do it again at more leisure, enabling him to look his
fill. And touch his fill, of course. Not to mention lick, bite, taste
and smell and any other conceivable method of experiencing Klaus…

Thoughtfully, Dorian sat on his love's bed. After a moment, he pulled
back the day cover and tugged the pillow into his lap, burying his face
in it and breathing in his Major's subtle, unique scent.

Now. How could he find out just what the hell had happened here this
evening?

What facts did he have to go on? Well, start with the obvious - there
was bad blood between the Major and this Tobias, bad blood of a
magnitude that had sent the Major into a rage the likes of which Dorian
had never seen before, and he had seen quite a number of volcanic
outbursts. But this - this had been new and frightening, just like the
glimpses of a panic alien to the man Dorian knew and loved.

And he'd been behaving strangely in other ways, as well. He'd even
started talking about why Dorian was attracted to him when he never
talked about such things - he'd come right out and asked what he could
do to become unattractive to Dorian and men like Dorian, demanded to
know what it would take to rid himself of "the problem". What a
typically contrary and skewed attitude to take on the matter of his own
beauty that was. Anyone else would have been glad, but no, not Klaus.
Nothing was ever that simple with Klaus. *What great good fortune to be
born with a face that attracts warped degenerates like - you.*

At the time, Dorian hadn't paid attention to the way his love had
spoken that sentence, but in retrospect it hit him that Klaus probably
hadn't been thinking of Dorian at all when he'd started that sentence…
He'd substituted the reference just in time.

Bloody hell! Who had been chasing his Major when Dorian's back was
turned? And how could he have missed this?

Dorian punched the pillow in his lap in frustration and jumped up to
pace around the bleak and depressing room his love called home. How
dare some brazen stranger hit on his Klaus - was it that ridiculous
English agent? Was it that simpering little transvestite in Klaus' own
office? Or was it someone else entirely, someone he'd just met - But
no, Dorian was certain he'd have heard of that. He had his sources,
after all, sources who knew how much it would interest him to hear of
someone else daring to cast a covetous eye at his Major. It must have
been before Dorian had found Klaus and staked his as of yet not quite
confirmed claim to the man. Some years back, some brassy lecher must
have -

And just like that, it all clicked into place.

There was bad blood between the Major and this Tobias *because of
something that had happened many years back*, when Klaus had still been
a child - something that both Tobias and the Major refused to elaborate
on. Something that the Major would not, *could* not talk about even
now, not even when his father invoked his overdeveloped sense of duty
and family loyalty.

Something that had evoked a frightening, berserk rage in Klaus.

Oh no. Oh no, *no* -

This entire strange and frightening episode suddenly made a terrible
kind of sense. So many other things did, as well - the Major's
violently negative reaction to Dorian's advances, his dogged refusal to
accept that there was anything but twisted perversion in Dorian's
affection, even his lack of interest in sex in general… His
ridiculously exaggerated prudishness… And of course his reaction to the
sight of an old friend of his father's, whom he'd almost killed with
his bare hands in front of his father, Dorian, everyone…

Who had brought stark panic into Iron Klaus' eyes. Who had had to do
nothing but open a door and step into his fierce, fearless Major's line
of sight in order to do so.

"Oh *no*, oh my God no," Dorian whispered, appalled. He didn't want to
believe this - it seemed hardly possible that such an appalling thing
could happen to Klaus, not to *Klaus* - he would have killed the man
first, torn him limb from limb and spat on the corpse… But then he
hadn't always been a six-foot two fully trained NATO agent, had he, and
he *had* tried to kill the bastard, a little late, but the attempt had
unmistakably been in complete earnest…

*Oh God, my love… What has that bastard done to you?*

And what had *Dorian* done?

But it wasn't the same, Dorian loved him, Dorian would never hurt him
or - or force him to do something he didn't want to do...

Dorian realised with a surge of nausea that he couldn't really be sure
that that wasn't exactly what he'd done. He'd jumped on Klaus, pushed
him down, kissed him and groped him and almost forced a reaction - and
how could he be sure that the reaction he'd gotten at last was due to
an attraction on Klaus' part that he just didn't want to admit? That
was what he'd thought at the time, what he'd wanted to think, but… How
could he be sure it wasn't something else entirely, that Klaus hadn't
been lying so tense and still because he'd been reliving memories of
something so terrible that he couldn't even move to escape from
Dorian's touch, that his physical reaction hadn't been mere reflex
forced from his body against his will, that he hadn't just been
suffering through a replay of something he'd thought he'd put behind
him forever long ago…

But it *couldn't* be the same! Dorian loved him. Dorian loved him! He
hadn't wanted to hurt him -

The desperate thought seemed even weaker now than it had a moment
before, the hope drowning in despair. Because really, how likely was it
that Tobias had deliberately set out to hurt his best friend's son, his
own godson - wasn't it far more probable that he'd thought he felt some
- some kind of - affection -

*I came because I had hoped that now that we were both rational adults,
we could finally bury this ridiculous ill feeling you have been
nursing.* Ridiculous ill feeling. Great high-mindedness.

Dorian made a dash for the bathroom and barely made it to the toilet in
time. He hadn't eaten much today, but even after he'd regurgitated
every scrap of food he'd ingested in what seemed like the last two
weeks, his stomach refused to settle down and he retched miserably,
bringing up nothing but a thin dribble of bile that burned his throat
and made his eyes tear.

It was also possible that he was crying. At this point he couldn't
distinguish between the nausea and the horror anymore.

Was there really a difference between Dorian and Tobias? How could
Dorian have failed to notice something so fundamental - how could he
have forced his attentions on his love so vehemently and been so
oblivious to Klaus that he had never realised - had never even
considered the possibility -

Nothing had truly changed, but now Dorian suddenly saw how far from his
grasp everything he had hoped for, everything he had thought would soon
be his, truly was. He'd been making a bloody fool of himself - he'd
been expecting the Major to fall into his arms and bed at any moment,
never realising how far from success he had truly been in his hopeless
campaign.

Not even in those occasional and brief moments of self-pity when he'd
despaired of ever carrying his point with his stubborn love had Dorian
considered giving up before. But now… How could he not? Knowing what he
knew now, how could he force his love on Klaus any longer, knowing what
it must mean to his one true love to be pursued like this - knowing
that he was causing pain and torment where he wanted only to heal, to
soothe and comfort and love…

But he knew he would be fooling himself with a decision to stay away
from the Major. Klaus might never let Dorian close, but somehow or
other his image had insinuated itself so deep into Dorian's previously
all but impervious heart that he could not let go of the last sliver of
hope without losing himself.

And somehow, this was almost the most terrible part of this evening's
revelations. For the first time in his life, Dorian was literally
sickened by his own egotism. It didn't help that he suspected even his
self-disgust was nothing more than a method to ease his conscience.

It was too late. He couldn't let go now. Not even to prevent more pain
to his beloved could he stay away. Not even when he'd already raped the
only man he had ever loved could he stop yearning after his body.

There was nothing left in his stomach, not even bile. It didn't seem to
make a difference. He threw up anyway.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Oh my! Look, the Neckar. And that would be the old town centre over
there, I dare say. You can see quite a bit from up here, can't you,
girls?"

Klaus suppressed a growl. The girls timidly agreed with their mother's
inane statement, one even going so far as to smile at Klaus hesitantly.

The Countess of Thurnis, Hedwiga, youngest daughter of the Duke of
Bavaria, leaned out of the narrow window of the Powder Tower's belfry
for a moment longer, her boyishly short hair fluttering in the breeze.
Her three daughters stood together at another window on the far side of
the small space, only one of them seeming interested in the view of the
town of Eberbach and the adjacent river valley spread out below. One of
the others was shivering a little from cold because she had foolishly
failed to consider the weather when choosing her designer costume for
the outing.

Klaus considered the possibility that she had gone without a warmer
coat on purpose in order to oblige him to lend her his own - which he
would only do if she came right out and asked for it herself, which he
knew perfectly well was out of the question. He then wondered whether
his job was making him paranoid or whether he'd always been this way.

"Isn't that Heinrich's car there? He had one of those older Rolls
Royces last I saw him. I thought he was in Austria at some ridiculous
cabinet meeting or other and couldn't come. Really, you'd think he'd
have taken a clue from what happened to his unfortunate great-uncle
when he tried to get back into politics. The men in that line have
never had a sense of timing, and anyway I have always held that -
goodness. Who's that? *That's* not one of Heinrich's lot. I'm quite
certain."

Klaus looked down on the old market square and a miniature figure
wrapped in a royal blue cloak and had no doubt at all of the figure's
identity. Even if the wide brim of the extravagant hat completely
obscured the wearer's face and hair from this point of vantage, there
was something about the movements, the way he shook out his cape and
settled the hat at the correct angle before turning to walk into the
lobby of the "Hotel Karpfen", the most expensive hotel in town.

"That," he said, his mood for once taking a radical swing to the better
at the man's appearance as he saw the gleam in the Countess's eye, "Is
Dorian, the Earl of Red Gloria."

"Really!" She whirled away from the banister at once, posture
straightening and face settling into determination. Her girls
straightened beneath the scrutiny of their mother, who was looking at
them like a general mustering the troops. " Maria, girl, your hair.
Straighten that jacket, Hannah. Don't hunch your shoulders. Didn't you
have anything more fitting to wear? Konstanze, you're growing prettier
every time I look, and of course your English is excellent…"

Klaus smiled maliciously and stepped aside to let the attack formation
sweep through the narrow door leading to the winding staircase, intent
on settling on the hapless Eroica and incidentally leaving Klaus behind
in perfect peace and quiet.

That was the plan, at least.

The Countess stopped and snagged Klaus' sleeve. He tried to jerk the
fabric from her grasp, glaring at the woman indignantly, but she was
unimpressed and held on firmly. "You must introduce us, Klaus. How well
do you know the Earl?"

The Major turned up the intensity of his glare until it had reached the
dimensions of a full glower. This expression had made trained KGB
agents drop their guns in sheer fright and made even his superiors take
cover, but Hedwiga, with countless generations of high-handed and often
fatally self-confident nobility in her blood to back her up, was
completely unfazed.

"Quite well enough," he snapped finally.

"Then perhaps you know whether the rumours I have occasionally heard
concerning his - ah - life-style are founded in truth?"

This was the outside of enough. Klaus tore his sleeve free with a
violent jerk and snarled "I do not concern myself with rumours." This
was completely untrue, of course - rumours were an excellent source of
information in any field - but he really did not feel inclined to
discuss the Earl's sexuality right now. Or ever.

The Countess was watching him in mild surprise, her eyebrows climbing
into her hairline. "How unwise of you, Klaus. But it doesn't really
matter, I suppose. Everyone must marry for one reason or another, after
all."

"Eventually," he snapped, with a tone of voice that he hoped made it
very clear that as far as he was concerned, eventually was a very long
way off.

She lowered her elevated eyebrows and smiled enigmatically. "Shall we
go?"

And so they went.

Klaus tried not to think. He'd been not-thinking ever since last night.
As long as he didn't think, everything would flow smoothly and normally
onwards. As long as he didn't acknowledge anything unusual - anything
he didn't want to acknowledge - it could not make a difference to him.
Nothing would truly change if he did not allow it to change him.

A pile of suitcases, hatboxes and assorted other items of luggage was
already piled in front of Eroica's car when Klaus and the Thurnis women
emerged from the tower's entrance. Hotel employees were bustling back
and forth to carry the load inside while Bonham continued to produce
new items of the Earl's travelling wardrobe out of the limitless trunk
of the Rolls Royce.

Klaus marched by without acknowledging Bonham, but noted the small
start the older man gave when he caught sight of him. It made him feel
a little better to know that there were still *some* people around who
were properly intimidated by him.

The Earl of Red Gloria was draped artistically over the front desk, all
sunlight-blond curls and midnight-blue satin, one hand negligently
splayed on the counter, the other one stemmed into his waist, gathering
back the folds of the voluminous cloak and holding the hat. He was
wearing a billowy white blouse, black trousers and thigh-high black
boots beneath the wrap; the only thing missing was a sword. From the
ridiculous clothing to the elaborate, calculated pose, everything about
the man was too much - too extravagant, too obviously calculated to
draw attention, too exuberant, too loud… too everything.

Taking a deep breath, Klaus steeled himself. "Lord Gloria," he barked.
"May I present to you Hedwiga, the Countess von Thurnis, and her
daughters Maria, Konstanze and Johanna von Thurnis. Hedwiga, girls,
this is Dorian Earl of Red Gloria. Have a nice day."

The man coming in with a new set of Eroica's luggage hastily jumped
aside for him, but Hedwiga was too fast for the Major. She snatched his
arm and dragged him right back to the front desk, where Eroica was now
staring at the gaggle of Thurnis girls with huge, startled blue eyes.

"Now, Klaus, don't rush off, it's not polite, and we haven't seen the
Nepomuk Church or the Medieval baths yet. We're going to invite the
Earl to join us, aren't we? Lord Gloria, do come along. Dear Klaus is
showing Eberbach to us, we just saw lots of medieval fortifications and
ammunition towers and such and there's still a whole day ahead of us!
And we can all go up to the castle afterwards and -"

"No! I happen to know Lord Gloria is a very busy man," Klaus ground out
hastily before that infernal woman could come out with her latest
horrendous scheme. "We cannot impose upon him. I know he'll gladly drop
everything for the sake of not offending anyone, and really, I
absolutely insist that he not go out of his way."

"Klaus, don't be so stuffy. Let's just let the Earl speak for himself,
shall we? I know Lord Gloria would love to see -"

"I AM NOT STUFFY!" Klaus roared. This was simply too much! Did he
really have to stand here and let himself be insulted by the unbearable
dragon just because she was related to him around three dozen corners?

For a long moment, the lobby fell utterly silent. Even Eroica flinched
slightly, but Hedwiga only tutted and waved an amused hand at her new
hope for one of her daughter's matrimonial prospects. "Don't mind
Klaus, Lord Gloria. He's all roar and no bite. Let's all go over to
that charming little café we passed earlier to take tea."

The Major gave up. Sometimes the best way to handle an appalling
situation was to go with the flow - at this point, further attempt to
better it would only muddy the waters further and most likely lead to
even worse results.

Damn - he was out of cigarettes. He barked a command at the woman
behind the front desk, who happened to be unfortunate enough to catch
his eye when he looked around searchingly. She'd been watching the
entire proceedings with an increasingly wide-eyed and rabbit-like
expression, and now she jumped to get him a new packet of cigarettes
with gratifying promptness.

Sweeping a dark glower across the entire lobby just in case anyone felt
like giving him any more nonsense to deal with, Klaus met Eroica's gaze
for the first time. The man looked doubtful, almost unhappy, really,
and Klaus' mood lifted slightly. At least he wasn't the only one forced
to endure the curse of the matchmaking witch. And if the damned
nuisance thought that he was safe just because he was queer, he was in
for a nasty awakening.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"What brings you to Eberbach, Lord Gloria?"

The question caught Klaus' wandering attention and he listened with
half an ear as Eroica spun out an improbable yarn of an auction in
Heidelberg, friends in Neckarsteinach and an interposed tour of the
countryside.

The dragon had taken care of the seating arrangements in a manner most
agreeable to Klaus; he was sitting in between two of the marriageable
daughters while Eroica was wedged in between Konstanze the
English-speaking and Hedwiga the Horrible herself. The two girls next
to Klaus had fallen silent after only the most desultory attempts at
striking up a conversation with him, and their mother was too busy
grilling the English Earl to bother him, which also meant that the
English Earl was too busy countering her conversational sallies to
bother Klaus.

The Major had simply leaned back, sipped his coffee, and allowed his
thoughts to drift. He'd also been smoking almost constantly, silently
daring anyone in the café to protest. No one had felt up to the
challenge so far. Too bad. Klaus could have done with blowing off a
little steam.

It was time to think. Not thinking was all well and good while it
carried you through a difficult situation without making you falter the
way thinking would have. Sooner or later, though, there came the point
when a switch in strategy was called for. Not thinking was no solution
in the long run - it was a danger in itself, and it was cowardly.
Whatever else he might be, Klaus had never been a coward.

Very well, then.

The first step in any investigation was to gather the available facts.
The facts of the case were clear enough for the most part - Eroica had
been pursuing him for years, and yesterday, Klaus had allowed himself
to be caught.

It was the question of motivation that was giving Klaus trouble. Of
course Eroica had never made a secret of either the circumstance that
he was a perverted queer or that he wanted to get the Major into bed,
but those factors were only the surface facts of the matter and the
more important reasons behind them were as completely in the dark as
ever. What was it that drove Dorian to desire the Major, of all people?
Was it the challenge, perhaps? What *could* it be?

And as for Klaus' own motives… There were too many possibilities, and
none of them seemed satisfactory.

He caught himself shying away from the subject and frowned darkly at
his own cowardice. It was fruitless to deny something that had
inarguably taken place. The proper procedure was to analyse it, find
out why it had happened, and employ the results of the analysis to
determine an optimal plan of action.

Facts, he reminded himself. Work with what you know. The fact was that
he had voluntarily had sex with another man - with Eroica. He could
easily have fended off the thief's advances, but he had chosen not to
do so. Instead, he had allowed another man to have complete access to
his body and bring him to climax. And more than that, he had returned
the favour when Eroica had asked him to.

He had threatened to kill Tobias on sight, and then he had turned
around and let Dorian give him a blow job. It made no sense.

But of course that wasn't true, and he didn't let himself get away with
the weak and foolish attempt at evasion. It made sense, all right.
Everything made sense. One only had to discover the controlling and
unifying facts behind the apparently random events that made it to the
light of the public.

He took another drag on his cigarette, leaned back more comfortably in
his chair and regarded Eroica, ruthlessly dragging up and sorting out
his own feelings. The thief was frivolous, flighty, exasperating and
irritating, and almost always acutely embarrassing to be seen with. The
man made no secret of his predilection towards larceny and sexual
perversion, and the only principles he followed were his own giddy
whims and fancies. The pursuit of personal pleasure ruled his
existence. An existence more futile and pointless could hardly be
imagined.

Still, no matter how often Klaus had declared that he hated Eroica,
this was not true. The thief frequently annoyed him to the point of
physical violence, but he couldn't hate someone so essentially
harmless. He was a major nuisance, he was a thief, and he was a
pervert, but in the end he was no more than an overgrown and
irresponsible child.

The man had no sense of proportion, no feeling for the relative
importance of things, no larger point of view beyond his own wishes and
desires. He was infantile and irresponsible, yes, but there was not the
slightest spark of malice in him - he was, in his own strange,
debauched way, an innocent, pure of heart and as naïve as a new-born.
And the Earl's boundless enthusiasm, irrepressible cheer and intense
joie de vivre were almost endearing at times - Eroica was playing at
life like the child that, in a way, he was. He played dress-up, he
chased after every shining bauble that caught his fancy, he always
wanted to have his own way, and he always seemed to expect life to
follow some dramatic, elaborately romantic script that he had written
for it in his own mind.

He exasperated the Major, but at the same time, he… drew him. Now,
looking at Dorian's perfect profile, the carefully groomed tumble of
golden curls, and the ridiculous pirate outfit, what Klaus felt was
almost like… affection.

Right on cue, Dorian turned his head and looked at Klaus, smiling
slightly at something the Countess was saying. Deep down in Klaus'
being, buried so deep down he would have missed it if he hadn't been
searching for it, something never before acknowledged stirred at the
look in Eroica's deep blue eyes.

Shaken, the Major looked away, and by the time he had collected himself
to return the thief's scrutiny, a renewed scowl directed at his own
weakness gracing his features, Dorian was not looking in his direction
anymore.

It didn't matter. Klaus had found the facts he had set out to find.
What had happened yesterday had not been a fluke - an aberration caused
by the stresses of the day and the after-effects of extreme anger and a
heavy narcotic. He was attracted to Eroica. There was no way around it.

Well, hell. There was no use denying it - he *would* face facts. He was
not weak and cowardly enough to deny a proven fact merely because he
did not want it to be true. Major Klaus von dem Eberbach was attracted
to another man - had, in fact, had sex with him. This obviously meant
that he was queer.

Or did it? Perhaps he was only experiencing a temporary upsurge of the
bi-sexual tendencies dormant in everyone. Of course, that line had
sounded like a load of crap when he'd heard one of the NATO
psychologists spout off some drivel of the kind, but then - hell, what
did Klaus know about it?

Damn. It looked like he was going to have to find out one way or the
other, whether he wanted to or not. Not even his own urges seemed
interested in what he wanted anymore. Instincts... What anachronistic
nonsense. As if he didn't have enough to deal with already.

No use moaning about it. The question was now what he was going to do
about this appalling situation.

Once he'd found the right angle of approach for the problem, it really
wasn't all that alien. Just another problem to be solved, another
ominous mystery to be cleared up, it's destructive potential safely
dissipated.

First things first… Most of all, more facts had to be gathered.

So far, Dorian had seemed unusually subdued, which Klaus had chalked up
to the Countess' account. The Major was immensely relieved that the
flamboyant Earl wasn't trying to flaunt the true extent of his
relationship with Klaus in front of the Thurnis family, which was far
more discretion than could have been expected from the nuisance - Klaus
would have denied everything heatedly, of course, and there was no
doubt in his mind that he would have been believed, but it would have
been utterly mortifying all the same.

But whatever his reasons, Eroica was as well-behaved as Klaus had ever
seen him, conversing with the Countess and even her dumb daughters with
more patience than Klaus had ever been able to conjure forth for this
kind of empty social prattle. He had looked at Klaus, yes, but even the
Major couldn't blow up at looks alone, particularly since they'd been
almost discreet by the thief's standards. He hadn't made any outright
propositions or even flirtatious remarks, and for Eroica, that was the
epitome of discretion.

Good. The unusual reticence made it easier for Klaus to carry out his
own newly forged plans. He hoped Dorian would continue to hold back his
over-abundant exuberance a bit. Klaus thought he would find all of that
enthusiasm a bit daunting when it came down to the crunch. Not that he
was afraid, of course. Merely - somewhat apprehensive.

"Dinner at eight, the restaurant you mentioned," he said casually as
the Thurnis daughters collected their handbags, jackets and assorted
other paraphernalia in preparation to leaving the café at long last.

"Pardon me… Major?"

Klaus glared at Dorian. The man looked almost shocked. Now what? Had he
suddenly become shy after a lifetime of brazenness, or was this merely
another of his aggravating poses? "Are you deaf or just stupid? I said
eight, tonight. Understood?"

Evidently so. The thief agreed very quickly after being asked the
second time, although he still looked a bit dazed.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As its name implied, the restaurant "Zur Alten Muehle" had once been a
mill. The brook that had been used to power the grinding stones had
long since been diverted or dried up - Klaus rather thought he should
have remembered which, but was too distracted to attempt to retrieve
the memory of what he had once learned of local history. The wheel had
been preserved, though, and the building itself had been first a shed,
then a private house, and had now been converted into a small,
exclusive gourmet restaurant.

Klaus parked some streets away from the old mill and walked the rest of
the way on foot. Force of habit - he knew that his car was far less
likely to be recognised than he himself was. It didn't make a
difference. He was having dinner with a foreign Earl who was passing
through, a man whom he had run into several times before in Bonn.
Nothing could have been more innocuous. Except, perhaps, inviting said
foreign Earl up to the formal dinner now taking place in Schloss
Eberbach.

Eroica would be very surprised to learn that he was of a retiring bent
and very shy of joining large gatherings when he didn't know anyone
there.

"Good evening, my love," Dorian said softly. He was leaning against the
side of the Rolls Royce and Klaus bent quickly to glance inside, making
sure that no Bonham or - God forbid - James was hiding inside to make
sure he didn't injure their precious Master or, horror of horrors, make
him pay for the meal.

Klaus surveyed Dorian's clothes in approval and not a little relief.
He'd chosen to come in black slacks and a burgundy cashmere sweater;
even the long coat he wore over it was unremarkable. His golden curls
gleamed in the light falling out of the old mill's windows. He was
wearing them loose, and they tumbled across his shoulders in artful
disarray.

Because it was the purpose of this entire outing, the Major allowed
himself to evaluate the other man's aesthetic appeal. High, delicately
sculpted cheekbones, a nose almost as sharply aristocratic as Klaus'
own, a mouth elegantly swung, but not generous. His classically
handsome features might even have been on the ascetic side if it hadn't
been for the eyes… Large and intensively, vibrantly blue. Taken all
together, Dorian was undeniably attractive.

Deciding to give himself a bit more time before attempting to analyse
and evaluate the impact Eroica's appeal had on him personally, Klaus
pointed his chin towards the entrance of the mill. "Let's go."

The thief sighed. "Why is it that everything you say to me either
sounds like an insult or an order?"

Klaus lifted his eyebrows. "Why the hell do you think?"

"I suppose it *was* a stupid question." Another sigh. "I do appreciate
the butchness, so I shouldn't complain."

He appreciated the *butchness*? For a moment, Klaus wondered whether
this should be considered an affront, but then decided that it wasn't
worth the effort of an appropriate response that would only distract
him from more important matters. He contented himself with a disgusted
snort.

"You are so beautiful," Dorian said softly, sounding almost mournful.

Earlier that evening, he'd stared at his reflection for what had seemed
like a very long time. He was relatively even-featured - that was, no
particular feature distinguished itself in a negative way. His eyes
were perhaps rather unusual on account of the colour, and of course he
was in excellent physical shape, but that could hardly be it, and there
was nothing else. He didn't see it, whatever it was. He still couldn't
understand.

Klaus glared at Eroica with a vague kind of suspicion that was not
dispelled by the other man's peculiarly earnest and intense, almost
searching gaze.

After a moment, he shook his head impatiently and turned on his heel,
marching off to the restaurant. Part of him was still hoping that
Dorian would decide he'd had enough of being insulted and ordered
around, but he knew very well that it was a vain hope - he'd been
insulting the man for as long as he'd known him, and it had never made
him back off. Dorian didn't seem to have any pride at all.

And for the moment, it was better that he didn't change his mind. After
all, Klaus was trying to resolve something important.

Inside the small entrance area of the old mill, Klaus stopped and
looked around the circular room, orienting himself. The décor picked up
on the mill theme, using lots of stone and wood. An old millstone was
mounted high on the wall next to the entrance, and the Major gave it a
brief look to ensure that it was secured adequately. Most of the small
number of tables were already occupied. There was a cast-iron staircase
in the middle of the room, winding up along the side of a stone
fireplace open to four sides. There was no fire lit, but all the same
it made for a pleasing partition of the room.

Klaus chose a table and indicated his choice to a very polite and
formal waiter who had come hurrying up to him. The waiter began to
protest something about a prior reservation, but speedily decided that
he could still change the arrangement when Klaus skewered him with a
steely look.

The Major ignored Dorian until he'd sat down and ordered a bottle of
the house wine, but he was very aware that the other man had followed
him just as expected and now sat across from him.

"I appreciate your co-operation," Klaus forced out stiffly because he
had determined earlier that he would do his best to be polite. He
needed Eroica's co-operation if this was to work, and the truth was
that he *was* grateful, not for the fact the man had turned up at all -
which had not been in true doubt - but for his apparent and all but
unprecedented effort not to offend Klaus' sensibilities by his attire
or conduct. So far.

Dorian fiddled with the napkin and smoothed back his hair. He said
nothing. He didn't seem to be entirely comfortable.

Good. Neither was Klaus.

"This isn't some kind of NATO business meeting, is it?" the Earl asked
at long last.

Klaus snorted and didn't bother to answer. Stupid question - he wasn't
in the habit of inviting outside NATO contractors to dinner.

The reminder of the second theft the irritating man had perpetrated on
Klaus caused a brief surge of righteous anger to rise, but he forced it
down determinedly. He wasn't going to let himself be distracted. "Keep
it," he snapped brusquely. "It's an outdated model by now."

The arrival of the wine and menus thankfully interrupted the less than
pleasant conversation. The waiter poured a centimetre of wine into
Klaus' glass, and when Klaus had fulfilled his role in the little
ritual by tasting and approving the waiter's selection of vintage, he
looked up to find Dorian watching him with a hint of his usual
flirtatious smile playing around the corners of his mouth.

"What?" he snapped reflexively, barely managing to choke back the
extremely stupid second question why the man was looking at him like
that. He *knew* why the perverted queer was staring at him like that,
God damn him. He wished he didn't.

Dorian laughed. "Nothing, darling. Should I even bother to look at the
menu or are you going to order for me?"

Klaus struggled with himself and thought he managed to contain his
glower for the most part. This wasn't going well - he was too touchy,
too unnerved by the situation. He had to unwind, or this would all be
for nothing. Not acceptable. He was here for a purpose. He knew what he
had to do.

*So do it. Only a coward would back down from what he knows must be
done.*

And so he did not snap at the brightly smiling pervert or even glare at
him. Instead, he looked down at the elegantly leather-bound menu for a
moment and called upon his schooling as well as his courage, dredging
up a response that would have been appropriate if he'd been here with a
woman.

"If you wish," he said then, lifting his gaze and forcing a smile that
wanted to bare teeth, but didn't. "Perhaps you would prefer some help
with translating the entree, though. I do not know what you would like
best."

Blue eyes widened in astonishment. Dorian blinked down at the menu,
then up at Klaus again.

"Oh," he said after another unusually long pause. "I think I see." And
then a new kind of smile dawned slowly on his face, eliminating any
trace of the strange reticence and transforming Dorian's peculiar
reserve into an unabashed glow of radiant happiness.

Klaus quickly leafed past the soups and busied himself with selecting
something he might be able to force down past the constriction in his
throat. He hoped that by the time he had to look at the other man
again, he would have regained some measure of - decorum. Composure.
Whatever.

"Thank you," Eroica said softly, startling the Major into glancing
across the table briefly. The smile was gone, but the glow was still
there. Damn. "For offering to translate, I mean, although it's not
necessary. My German is pretty good, you know, and I normally steer
clear of anything I can't place. Do you know, a couple of days ago I
was subjected to a most unpleasant experience because James had somehow
succeeded in phoning ahead and ordering the daily special for all of
us. He thought it would be cheapest, although why, I can't imagine. It
was quite disastrous - the poor fellow had a nervous breakdown when the
bill arrived. He kept wailing 'and the call was twenty pfennigs!'
Anyway, the reason why I'm telling this story is that that was my first
introduction to Saumagen - though fortunately I didn't find out just
what it actually *was* until the day after."

Eroica hardly paused for breath before prattling on, apparently
requiring no further encouragement. He made Saumagen sound like a major
ecological hazard. The Major had never tried this particular dish
because the thought of eating a pig's stomach revolted him. The times
when it had been unthinkable to waste any part of an animal were past,
and he saw no reason to adhere to customs formed by a long-past and
outdated necessity - after all, he didn't run around in uncured animal
skins, either. However, for some reason he now felt the urge to defend
Saumagen against Eroica. He didn't really think that a man whose nation
would cheerfully consume porridge and baked beans for breakfast had
grounds for complaint.

He resisted the impulse for starting a defence of the unknown Saumagen,
though - it was illogical, and he was not here to fight. Although he
did seem to be reminding himself of that fact strangely often.

Fortunately, Dorian had now settled in for a long chatting session and
needed little encouragement from the Major to hold an amazingly
animated and far-ranging conversation, more or less completely by
himself. Klaus listened to amusing anecdotes and assorted excursions
into art history and related subjects without really hearing a word of
what Eroica was saying, letting the words wash over him like a soothing
shower. Dorian had a pleasant voice when he wasn't pulling that
atrocious flaming queer act.

There were many things Klaus didn't understand about Eroica, and why
the man chose to expose his perversion for the world to see was one of
the most incomprehensible points in the thief's character. Dorian
lacked for neither intelligence nor straight-forward pragmatism - the
fact that he was still free to pursue his dishonest trade after all
these years was more than sufficient testament to that. It would take
far less cunning to disguise Dorian's sexual preferences from the world
than to disguise the identity of the infamous thief Eroica. Instead,
the man flaunted himself and his perverted proclivities at every
opportunity, making a disgraceful spectacle of himself and even taking
pride in the fact.

By the time the waiter appeared to take their orders, Klaus found that
he had weathered the first crisis and was again reasonably fortified
against whatever was yet to come, prepared to carry on with the plan he
had devised. He had even steeled himself to order for Eroica if it
became necessary, but fortunately Dorian did not put his resolve to the
test, choosing to order for himself.

Dorian grew more animated as he talked, the last traces of his earlier,
uncustomary reserve dissipating completely. Familiar gestures and poses
crept back into his body language - he tilted his head artfully to the
side and smiled, sweeping his eyelashes down to glance up again almost
coyly; he leaned to the side with one hand supporting the chin; he
flipped back the tumble of golden curls with a negligent toss of the
head. Klaus gauged and evaluated the gestures and decided that they
were doubtless chosen for their presumed seductive value. He didn't
think Eroica was aware of doing it, but he was flirting again.

As long as Eroica kept the flirting to this level, though, the Major
could simply ignore it. It would be unreasonable to reprimand him when
he was already being unusually circumspect about it.

"And do you think he noticed? Not Nigel. You wouldn't believe the look
on his mother's face when she returned. Of course I wasn't there and so
I didn't actually see it, but I can just imagine -"

Klaus regarded Dorian as he flirted and sparkled and prattled and could
not find either anger or disgust for the other man in his heart. At the
bottom of all of Dorian's enraging pranks and capers, all of his
outrageous behaviour and shameless perversion, was a man Klaus found
almost endearing.

It wasn't the right word, of course. It didn't matter for now. He had
all night - he could do this as slowly as he needed to. "Endearing"
would do for now. It was enough to know that he could not truly despise
or even dislike Eroica, even if he did despise certain aspects of his
habitual behaviour and life-style. *Numerous* aspects. Damn near every
damned aspect -

"Klaus? You shouldn't frown, it'll give you wrinkles, you know."

"I don't understand you," the Major snapped.

Dorian blinked, very obviously taken aback. He never seemed to find the
need to conceal, or even dampen, his overly emotional responses.

"You could just ask," the thief said at last, no trace of the light
banter of his previous chit-chat left in his tone at all. Klaus
approved of the sobriety, of course, but found the renewed intensity of
the blue stare fixed on him as unsettling as ever. "I can't think of
anything I wouldn't tell you about me if you asked. And if it makes you
feel better, Klaus, I don't understand you very well, either."

Klaus snorted. "That much is obvious."

He reflected that he should probably put Eroica's offer of information
to the test and ask after the things he had stolen and stashed away
somewhere. Doubtless it would not accomplish the actual return of the
property in question to the rightful owners - even if the man *did*
tell the truth, he'd only have his employees relocate the booty before
Klaus could do anything about it - but at least it would establish how
serious Dorian was about this. This offer of information, that was.

Eroica was beginning to look faintly apprehensive when their dinner
arrived, relieving Klaus of the need for an immediate decision. He
would shelve the problem for later. Maybe he could have small teams of
alphabets standing by in England near the likely locations before he
actually asked Dorian where the man kept his unlawfully acquired
collection.

But that was something to be considered later. For now, Klaus had other
plans to carry out.

The food was excellent, as was only appropriate at these prices, but
not unexpectedly, the veal medallions and cognac sauce stuck to Klaus'
palate and refused to go down without considerable effort on his part.
He managed half of one and some potato croquettes before giving up;
Dorian was happily tucking into his ragout, though, so Klaus picked at
his salad half-heartedly until he judged the other man was as good as
finished.

"Have you ever been to Hamburg?" Klaus asked at random.

Dorian seemed wary and paused, the fork poised half-way to his mouth.
"Yes, I have. Why?"

"I think it is a very beautiful city. Don't you?" Klaus knew he was bad
at this and felt rather stupid, but forged on determinedly. "The
freight harbour is very interesting."

"The freight harbour." Eroica's mouth twitched as though he were trying
to hold back a smile. "I dare say it is. I haven't been there yet, but
I will make a point of visiting it now."

"What did you see, then?" Klaus tried again, refusing to back down.

This time Dorian took the bait and began to talk again, describing the
beauty of the Binnen Alster at length and digressing to enthuse about
the excellent shopping opportunities afforded by the designer
boutiques. He politely skirted the subject of art galleries and
museums, Klaus noted.

And because it was impossible to delay any longer, Klaus steeled
himself and inspected the Earl's slim hands as he waved them with
graceful enthusiasm to illustrate a point, going on to devote equally
careful scrutiny to the elegant throat, the quirk of an eyebrow and
quick accompanying grin, the attractive features and extravagant curls.
He proceeded to imagine those hands on his skin, imagined nuzzling that
throat and kissing that mouth, and waited.

His stomach tightened at the realisation that he could not in all
honesty claim that the mental images repelled him.

"Would you like dessert?" he asked abruptly, interrupting Dorian rather
rudely but unable now to worry about the niceties he had been so
determined to observe.

Eroica looked at him for a protracted moment before smiling and shaking
his head. "Not today, I think, but do go ahead if you -"

"No." Klaus turned in the seat and imperiously summoned the waiter, who
hurried up with commendable speed and brought the bill with equal
dispatch.

Dorian trailed the Major closely as he walked out of the restaurant,
but hesitated as they passed the parked Rolls.

"I will take you to your hotel," Klaus announced brusquely.

For some reason the statement seemed to bring back the hesitation the
Major had noticed earlier in the evening back into Eroica's expression.
He held the blue gaze levelly until the Earl nodded at last and then
led the way to his own car.

The drive to the hotel was silent, but thankfully not long. Klaus
circled around the back and found a conveniently near parking space in
a side street. Dorian glanced at him uncertainly and did not
immediately get out of the car. He did not smell quite as obtrusively
of roses as he often did, Klaus noted. Apparently, Eroica had gone out
of his way to be as inoffensive as was possible, being who he was. It
was a radical departure from his usual conduct.

At point-blank distance, the not unpleasant flowery scent was
complemented by the more natural, very faint scent of Dorian himself.
His eyes looked more grey than blue, although that might have been the
darkness more than the range, and his lips were warm. Beneath the coat
and sweater, his shoulder was not particularly muscular, but
unmistakably male.

Klaus was still not repelled. Nervous, yes, even apprehensive, but not
repelled. He was not repelled even when the mouth beneath his opened
and a tongue coaxed his own lips apart and slipped through.

It was not unpleasant to kiss Dorian. He hadn't been in the state of
mind to pay much attention to it on the one previous occasion he'd done
this, and now he found that it was not at all the way he had thought it
would be. Of course, he would have been hard pressed to say what - if
anything - he had expected; it was just that he had always found
kissing distinctly disagreeable before. It was unhygienic and had no
true function in the context of the sexual act, but now he almost
thought that maybe, if he followed this line of inquiry further, he
would find that it had some previously unsuspected advantages.

He pulled back and gathered his determination for the last step in the
investigation.

"I trust your room is satisfactory?"

Dorian looked a bit dazed, but did not take him long at all to see the
opening and seize it. "Oh, it is - very much so. Perhaps you would like
to see it?"

He nodded curtly and got out. They used the back stairs and encountered
no one on their way to the suite on the top floor which Eroica
occupied; Klaus was not even capable of feeling relief at this moment,
though.

Once he had gestured for Klaus to precede him into his rooms and closed
the door, Dorian smiled too brightly and gestured towards the easy
chairs grouped around a coffee table at one end of the suite's living
room. He was talking again, his voice too cheerful just as his
expression and gestures were too casual.

Klaus didn't bother to listen to him. Instead, he reached out and
snagged the other man, pulling him in tightly against his body and
burying a hand in his hair to tilt back the head.

Eroica melted into the Major's arms eagerly. His mouth was soft and
welcoming and seemed familiar already, and if Klaus closed his eyes, he
could almost have imagined that the person he was kissing was a woman.
Except that there had always been some element of reluctance when
kissing a woman, a reluctance that did not seem to be surfacing now -
and, of course, that a woman wouldn't be pressing what was quickly
turning into an erection against his leg.

First things first. Klaus pushed the intruding thoughts and memories
firmly back into their drawer and concentrated on the kiss again.
Dorian was once again claiming the initiative and the Major let him
explore his mouth and nibble at his lip. He seemed to be quite
experienced, which was no surprise, and yes, upon closer consideration
there did seem to be a distinct element of enjoyment in kissing him.
His taste was pleasant, and he smelled and felt exceedingly good from
this close - almost - tempting. No… Alluring.

Hands were now roaming over his back and combing through his hair, and
Klaus decided that he liked that, as well. He pushed Eroica up against
a convenient wall and drew back a little to slip a hand under his
sweater, encountering the slide of silk underneath cashmere.

A quick tug divested the other man of the sweater and the silk
tunic-like garment underneath. The Major tossed them to the side and
returned his attention to exploring Dorian's body. His built was slim,
but muscular - built for limberness and endurance, not strength. Eroica
trembled under his hands and gasped a little when he stroked down to
the line of fair hair beginning low on his stomach.

"Klaus?"

"What," he said distractedly, working a hand down between the fabric
and the heated skin.

He discovered that Dorian arched his back like a cat when he was
touched in a certain way. It looked very… well, for lack of a better
word - incensing. It encouraged Klaus to take further liberties, such
as pressing the thief back against the wall and taking his mouth again
while his hand dove further down, curling around the solid length of
the other man's erection. He freed his other hand in order to unfasten
the belt and pants and push the restraining fabric aside; the silk
briefs yielded to a tug and he looked down to watch what he was doing
to Dorian's cock and testicles. He experimented a bit and soon found a
combination of stroking, fondling and gentle squeezing that produced
the optimum effect.

Evidently, Dorian enjoyed the sensations, and Klaus did, too. So far
everything seemed rather unambiguous. It was time to take this to a
more serious level.

He stepped back, causing an inarticulate sound of protest to break from
the flushed and panting thief. Eroica grabbed for him and caught his
head in a surprisingly steely grip, his lips and teeth and tongue
eagerly devouring Klaus. He followed when the Major backed up another
step, and suddenly it was Klaus who was pressed against a wall, a
dishevelled and very obviously aroused Dorian alternately rubbing
against him and tearing off his clothes.

Concentrating on the sensations sparked by the other man's hands and
mouth on his skin made Klaus feel slightly dazed and the support at his
back was not unwelcome. He leaned back against it, closing his eyes;
when Dorian's hands slid between his thighs, he spread his legs
obligingly to allow them easier access.

Eroica's touch was gentle, but sure and quite inflaming even through
the fabric of his trousers. Klaus opened his eyes again and looked at
the person who now had one hand fondling his genitals and the other
sliding down the back of his boxers, and it made no difference to the
feelings coursing through him that the person in question was male.

And even that was a lie, because Klaus knew very well that if he'd been
with a woman, he wouldn't have wanted or allowed her to do anything
like this - he'd never liked being touched this way. So far, his
infrequent sexual encounters had been driven more by a vague sense of
obligation than anything else; he had always found the act unsatisfying
and, on occasion, even unpleasant. Sex had always seemed enormously
overrated.

Unfortunately, the reason that now presented itself for this was not
one the Major would have chosen, had he been given a choice.

"Do you have any idea how lovely you are like this?" The low, heated
voice was unwelcome and distracting and Klaus growled, turning his head
away. Amazingly enough, Eroica took the hint for once and shut up.

Or - perhaps more likely - it was simply that now, his mouth was
otherwise occupied, steadily working its way down his body, detouring
to tongue and bite his nipples. Nobody had done that before, and its
effect was quite astonishing. It felt as though his body was lighting
up from the inside, waking to a new way of experiencing sensation.
Every inch of skin, every nerve ending was sensitised to a ridiculous
degree, yearning to be touched. And somehow, Dorian always seemed to
know just where to stroke and fondle in order to drive the restless
ache higher, to make the electric pleasure bite deeper.

Klaus wasn't the most qualified to judge, but even so he was fairly
certain that the flamboyant thief was every bit as great an expert at
this as he was at picking locks and disarming alarm systems. It felt as
though he was doing things with his tongue that should have been
anatomically impossible. And his hands were everywhere, stroking the
inside of his thighs, his genitals, his buttocks, gently stroking up
behind his testicles…

"I have waited so long for this, and I want to make love to you so
badly..." Dorian sighed and then laughed a little, but even though the
sound was almost ridiculously light and giggly, there seemed to be an
undertone of true anxiety there. "And now - Klaus, you have to tell me
what you want because I don't know, I always thought I did but now - I
only know what I want and -"

"I want you to fuck me."

Eroica froze. Huge blue eyes stared up at Klaus. "What?"

"You heard me." There was no use in doing things by halves. He wanted
this experiment to be conclusive. He was through second-guessing
himself.

Klaus bent down to take off his shoes and finish undressing, forcing
the other man to scramble back a little. Strangely enough, Dorian
looked hesitant, not at all like someone who thought the suggested
course of action was entirely recommendable.

With a mental shrug, Klaus crossed over into the bedroom and sat on the
large double-bed. He really couldn't be bothered to deal with Eroica's
unexpected second thoughts at this time. He was more than occupied with
beating down his own.

It didn't take Dorian that long to resolve whatever the problem had
been and follow. Before Klaus had fully settled on the covers, the
thief was in the room and hectically sorting through drawers, coming up
with a small tube of what was obviously lubricant. Not quite as
unprepared for this eventuality as he was pretending, was he?

Klaus smiled cynically and concentrated, focusing his mind on the
objective of the moment and his body's state of arousal. As long as he
didn't think, this wouldn't be any problem at all. No problem at all.

"Why don't we - Klaus, don't you think you'd rather -"

"No," he snapped. "Get on with it."

Dorian crouched in front of him, his hands petting and stroking Klaus'
thighs almost as though he wasn't aware of doing it.

"All right," he whispered at last, leaning forward for another
lingering kiss. Klaus laid back across the bed and the other man
followed him down, covering his body with his own. A thigh eased
between his and pressed against him intimately, causing sharp arcs of
arousal to spike through the Major's body.

When he slid out from beneath the other man and started to turn over,
Eroica's hand on his shoulder stopped him. "I want to see you, my love.
You are so beautiful."

"Stop saying that," Klaus grumbled, sounding half-hearted to his own
ears. Had he really begun to believe that, to Dorian, it was true? How
peculiar. It was irrelevant, of course. It shouldn't make a difference.

There was a tense moment when Eroica pushed a slick finger inside of
him, but Klaus directed a silent diatribe at himself for his cowardice
and forced himself to relax as much as he could. It took every bit of
concentration he could summon not to think about what he was doing,
about what he was letting another man do to him, and for a long moment
of almost-panic, he thought that he simply couldn't do this, that he
was not strong enough to let this happen and not think, not fight off
the touch -

He stared at the graceful, slender body poised above his own, at the
smouldering blue eyes, the tousled mass of golden curls, the dazed and
joyful look of lust in the man's - in *Dorian's* - face. Dorian.
Eroica. Dorian. He repeated the name to himself like a mantra,
concentrating.

And then, the most extraordinary burst of fiery pleasure exploded in
him, coiling outwards from Dorian's invasive fingers like a spiral of
annihilating sensation. He was vaguely aware that he was gasping for
air, arching his hips off the bed.

"Say my name, Klaus," the man in bed with him coaxed hopefully, just as
the second conflagration overtook him.

If Eroica wanted to hear it, there was no reason not to oblige him. It
wasn't that difficult. Everything was different, and Klaus found that
he could say the man's name without turning it into a threat or a
curse. He could surrender himself to sensation, relaxing into another's
touch and meeting another's desire with his own.

It truly wasn't that difficult, and he was good at not thinking during
sex.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This was something Dorian never would have expected. Not that he hadn't
occasionally allowed himself the odd fantasy… But not only had he
gotten his love into bed, not only had the man taken the initiative,
but he was actually demanding to be fucked! Dorian had hardly dared
dream of this in case it destroyed the rest of the fantasy by being too
high-flown, and he had not even in his wilder and more improbable
scenarios imagined things happening this quickly - and certainly not
now, after learning about -

But he didn't want to think about that now, not now, when his love was
at last panting and dark-eyed with lust for him. Steep learning curve?
Hah. The man was like a vertical take-off aircraft - if Dorian hadn't
needed to touch and taste him so badly, he could have handily leaned
back and left everything to his once so reluctant love.

To think that he'd imagined Klaus would be shy and hesitant at first.
The man had had his hand down Dorian's pants so fast he could compete
for the Olympic gold.

Dorian positioned himself very carefully, hesitating for as long as he
could possible get away with before beginning to push himself inside of
his lover's body. He still wasn't sure he should be doing this. What if
Klaus didn't like it? What if it brought back the wrong kind of
memories and he decided that he never wanted to make love to Dorian
again? What if -

Oh God. He felt so good - and the mere thought that this was Klaus at
last, not one of a hundred interchangeable willing bodies but *Klaus*,
his Major, his unique, irascible, beautiful love…

He caressed his lover's thighs and stomach with trembling hands,
curling a hand around his flagging erection and stroking it back to
full firmness while forcing himself not to move. The expression on his
Major's face was inscrutable; he couldn't tell if he'd hurt him or not,
but he wasn't about to take any risks. This was going to be as good for
Klaus as he could possibly make it. He wanted him to keep coming back
for more, more of this and more of every other way of making love that
Dorian knew, and some he would learn especially for him.

"I love you, Major," he said softly and watched his love's eyes cloud
over with an emotion he couldn't decipher. Not quite anger, but close.

Time to put this show on the road. He pulled back just a little and
every muscle in Klaus' stomach tensed immediately, outlined against the
skin in perfect rigidity. Oh God. How could anyone have a body like
this and the face to match and not believe it when he was told he was
beautiful? Even his stomach was beautiful - even his feet, and his
knees, his elbows - every damn part of him, everything -

A small thrust and when he pulled back out again his love stayed far
more relaxed. Dorian risked a longer stroke, and a longer one after
that, and almost forgot everything else in the feeling of Klaus' body
hot and tight around him, thrumming subtly with his lover's heartbeat,
opening for him...

He had to let go of Klaus' cock and grip his hips with both hands as he
settled into a steadily accelerating rhythm. There was barely enough
thought left to lift and angle just *so* to bump against the hidden
prostate - but when he did, Klaus gave a choked gasp and his perfect
form lifted in a wave of motion as smooth and natural as a wave rolling
to shore, a wave that drew his body upwards in an effortlessly graceful
curve.

The sight finished off whatever hint of rationality Dorian might have
had left. After that, all that he knew was heated skin beneath his
hands, the inflaming sight of perfection sweat-slicked and panting in
arousal, Klaus' body moving in delirious rhythm with his own, the
boundaries between them no longer entirely clear. Small sounds of
passion and need escaped him as he pounded into the body of the only
man for whom he had ever felt quite this kind of desire, and when he
finally fell into the blaze of excruciating completion with his lover's
legs wrapped firmly around his middle and eyes burning in wild green
fire staring back into his, he knew once again, but now with an
entirely new and astonishing, marrow-deep chill of fear, that he was
irrevocably lost.

He hadn't known it could feel like this to love someone. He hadn't
known it could be so horrifying. He'd been in love so often that he had
lost count, but he had never felt this. Why had he never known how
terrible and frightening it could feel - why hadn't he realised what he
was doing when he had fallen in love with the Major? He should have
known that this was not a man he could easily and safely love, that
this was a man who would suck him in and leave him bound and tangled
and full of this exquisite passionate pain in his heart -

His searching hand found warm wetness on his lover's stomach and his
heart burst with almost equal parts of joy and pain as he dove forward
to take his darling's mouth in a deep kiss, making love to him with
every stroke of the tongue.

He was afraid to stop kissing him. More than anything else he wanted to
curl up with his love and fall asleep in his arms, but he knew that the
chances of that happening were very slim indeed, and he was afraid to
stop this kiss, afraid to withdraw from Klaus' body and clean them both
off, afraid to do anything at all except draw out this last, fleeting
moment of perfection for as long as he possibly could. Once this moment
slipped through his fingers, anything could happen. And Dorian didn't
want anything to happen, not now, not when he finally had everything he
wanted within his grasp, in his bed warm and pliant and responsive
beneath his hands and mouth -

When it came, the change was obvious in every line of Klaus' loosely
sprawled body, in every fibre of his being, even in the taste of his
mouth beneath Dorian's. Subtle, but inevitable and unstoppable as the
storm gathering on the far horizon. Gathering momentum, drawing
together… foreboding and threatening and even, somehow, darkly
beautiful, because this, too, was Klaus.

Languid response turned to cool acceptance and then to impatient
rejection as his love pushed Dorian back roughly, breaking the kiss and
separating their bodies almost at the same time. If it hurt, he gave no
sign, sitting up and pushing wildly tousled black hair back into some
semblance of smoothness.

Dorian held his breath anxiously, but Klaus wasn't looking at him. His
brow was furrowed and his mouth set in a grim line, but no explosion
seemed imminent as he drew himself together to sit in an almost prim
posture, drawing up a portion of coverlet to drape himself in.

A dawning smile at the so-characteristic action turned into a dismayed
frown at the jarring realisation that Dorian's temperamental love had
very probably had good reason to develop his heavy streak of
prudishness. Dorian's stomach lurched briefly but he forced down the
surge of nausea, watching his Major.

Minutes passed and Klaus didn't move, merely sitting up with his back
as straight as an iron bar and his eyes straight ahead, expression
locked into a strange kind of grim contemplation. It was, noted Dorian,
an extremely military posture. It was quite an achievement to look
severely, spit-and-polish military mere moments after being fucked, but
Klaus pulled it off brilliantly. The man had faint bite marks on his
neck and shoulders and even around the left nipple, his mouth was
slightly swollen and his straight hair was tangled in the unmistakable
way that announced someone had been burying their hands in it, and even
so he managed to look as unapproachable and frosty as though sex was
something that happened to other people.

Dorian winced at the unfortunate phrasing of his own thoughts. Perhaps
he ought to say something, try to touch his Major... or maybe that
would be exactly the wrong thing to do. Unfortunately, he had only a
very vague idea of what might be going through the man's lovely but
thick-skulled head right now, and any act that called attention to him
could well turn out to be a rather bad idea.

Another minute or so dragged on and Dorian sighed, resigning himself to
an outburst of temper or even a physical attack. It couldn't be worse
than sitting here in silence and watching his Major stare into space
with that severe line graven around his mouth.

"Klaus? My love? Is everything…"

He trailed off as his Major turned to fix him with a steely green glare
that was uncannily reminiscent of a lamp being shined into the eyes of
the prisoner interviewed at gunpoint.

"How did you know?"

Dorian blinked and ran a hand through his hair, posing automatically
because he wasn't sure what was going on and didn't know what else to
do. He hated feeling uncertain and insecure… Fortunately it happened
very seldom. "Know what, darling?"

There was no immediate answer, but the glare continued as thin nostrils
flared and Klaus' mouth twisted in distaste. "That I was - that I *am*
- gay. Queer. A pervert like you."

Hmm. Was this a positive development or not? Dorian's heart wanted to
leap with joy at the implication that further encounters of the
intimate kind might not be out of the question in his Major's mind… but
then, that look of disgust did not bode very well, did it…

"Well, actually, love, it didn't really happen like that," Dorian
drawled, falling back on one of his stock patterns of behaviour in the
attempt to cover up his uncertainty. He stretched a little and widened
his eyes fetchingly. He refrained from fluttering his eyelashes,
though. Somehow he didn't think Klaus would be able to appreciate it
properly in his present mood. "All I knew was that I had to have you. I
can't say that I cared whether you were gay or straight or something in
between. It didn't seem to matter."

"As long as I slept with you." Flat voice. Cold look. Uh-oh.

Dorian tried a flirtatious smile. "Essentially, yes."

Derisive snort. "Interesting logic, Eroica. Sometimes I wonder how you
managed to survive in your line of business for so long." Pause. "So…
It was just a… *fortuitous* coincidence, then."

"No," Dorian protested hotly. "It was fate. What do artificial
categories like homo- or bi- or heterosexual mean in the face of two
souls that were destined for -"

"If you give me one more word of that drivel, I will hit you."

"Why are you always so violent? We just had wonderful sex and already
you're insulting and threatening me again. This is what they call
domestic violence, you know." Dorian knew he sounded petulant, but he
couldn't help it. *Some* people made everything so bloody difficult!

There was a long pause.

"You," the Major said at last, "Are a felonious, unprincipled, wilful,
thoughtless and utterly infantile pervert."

Dorian glared back indignantly. "And you are a brutish, arrogant, bossy
and frigid bundle of denial!"

The silence stretched.

"Yes," Klaus said after what seemed like a very long time, sounding
stiff and strangely formal. "I believe we are both correct."

Dorian let his head droop to the side, making his hair fall forward in
a long golden curtain to obscure part of his face. He knew this was a
very effective pose, and because he'd even added his best look of
smouldering anger and hurt defiance, he was more than a little put out
when his Major ignored the effort entirely and simply got up, drawing
the entire feather blanket away with him and spilling Dorian onto his
side.

"Fuck!" Dorian said when the bathroom door had closed firmly behind his
complicated and completely blanket-swathed darling.

He felt like breaking something valuable, but settled for kicking the
mattress. Fuck, fuck, *fuck*! He'd handled that incredibly badly. In
his eagerness to score a point in a game, he had missed the glaringly
obvious fact that of course his Major would never try to play this kind
of game. Dorian hadn't meant what he'd said, and he didn't like to
think that Klaus truly believed that what he'd called him adequately
reflected who he was, perhaps with an addendum of something like "but
he is punctual and efficient and extremely good at his job".

How depressing. Really, the poor man was incredibly fortunate that
Dorian loved him. He could see that he had his work cut out for him...

And strangely enough, Dorian found his ever-buoyant mood swing upwards
again at the thought of the challenge ahead of him as he turned to bury
his face in a sheet carrying his lover's - his lover's! - subtle but
inimitable scent.

They had a long way yet to go, he and his prickly and wounded love, but
there was less doubt than ever in his heart that they would find a love
together that was so beautiful all the world would pale before it.

And in the meantime, the sex was going to be great.

Epilogue

"Major Eberbach," the Chief said, drawing the title and name out as
though testing their probable verity by taste. A disgusting habit.

"Chief," the Major shot back tersely. He forced himself not to fidget
and lit himself a cigarette instead, ignoring the dark little scowl his
superior gave him.

"That is a deplorable habit, you know," the man opined. "Poison for the
lungs. In ten years you'll hardly be able to draw a breath."

"No doubt. Almost as bad as sugar and cholesterol, I hear."

The Chief, whose addiction to Milka chocolate was fabled throughout
NATO headquarters, scowled, making his eyes withdraw deeper into the
porcine folds of his face. "Pleasantries aside, Major. I trust you have
followed my *recommendation* and arranged for the matter we spoke of?"

Klaus rolled his eyes. The Chief's so-called recommendation had been an
entirely undisguised order, and he saw no reason for this ridiculous
beating about the bush. "If you are inquiring whether I have had my men
contact Eroica to employ his services for the assignment - as I was
ordered - then the answer is yes. Although I still hold that -"

"Excellent. It is my hope that in time, even you may be brought to
overcome your limited worldview and childish prejudices - and until you
do, you will just have to cope. Might be a while yet. Good luck, then -
and by the way, how is little Agent G doing these days?"

Pretending not to have heard the inquiry, Klaus stalked to the door. He
suspected the old queer only asked after his darling little
cross-dressing G in order to annoy him, anyway. Well, superiors weren't
there to be liked. Klaus was certain that most, if not all members of
his alphabet regarded him as the bane of their existence, almost more
so than the enemies they were working to defeat. As long as they were
efficient, that was perfectly all right with Klaus.

"A through F, P, Z, in my office," he barked as he swept through the
open office space of the alphabet. They jumped to obey with alacrity.

Klaus hadn't seen Eroica again after leaving him stretched out on the
disarrayed hotel bed in Eberbach; the thief had been wearing an odd
little smile and Klaus had had to suppress the brief urge to cure him
of his smugness, but had left quickly and without a word instead. In
spite of what he had feared, Dorian hadn't appeared at the castle again
in any of his guises and had already been gone when the Horrible
Hedwiga had gone to call on him the next day. He must be on a tight
schedule, Klaus supposed. So many museums to rob, so many priceless
jewels to steal…

In the intervening weeks, Klaus had attempted to accustom himself to
the thought that he was queer. He hadn't made too much progress; it
still seemed like a terrible stroke of injustice to him. It was fine
for people like Dorian, who had no principles in any case, but it
wasn't fair that *he* should be saddled with this. It didn't fit into
his plans at all.

Not that it was going to make all that big of a difference when you got
right down to it. Klaus was going to marry eventually, and he was going
to have children, or at the very least one child to carry on the line.
That much had never been in question - it was simply his duty.

And he wasn't about to start sleeping with men. That was completely out
of the question. The unfortunate fact that he was queer was one thing -
he could live with the knowledge, he supposed. It didn't have to make a
difference. He didn't have to think about it.

It would be quite another thing to actually act upon the knowledge, and
not only did Klaus have no intention of doing so, but he had found, to
his immense relief, that he also had absolutely no wish to do so. He'd
monitored himself very carefully, and he had not felt as much as a pang
of desire for any man he had come in contact with since he'd grown
aware of his bothersome predilection. Eroica didn't count. He was a
special case.

No, it really didn't have to make a difference at all. In fact, Klaus
had completely forgotten about it for long stretches of time when he
was working and had other things to think about. He'd never been much
bothered by sexual urges - he supposed his libido was simply naturally
low, which was very convenient. Nothing had to change.

Nothing much. Eroica... Well.

Klaus wasn't sure how this would affect his never exactly stable or
harmonious working relationship with the flamboyant thief, but they
were both professionals - of a sort, in Eroica's case - and he didn't
doubt he could somehow bring Dorian to do what was expected of him. The
constant innuendo and blatant overtures could hardly become any worse
than they had been before. Or so he hoped.

And maybe, just maybe, if the Major could be certain that the other man
understood what was being offered and, more importantly, what was not…
Maybe it was not entirely out of the question to sleep with men every
once in a while. With one man, at any rate. He'd have to wait and see
and be very careful.